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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28318263">Chaos In Consonance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyeopeia/pseuds/cassyeopeia'>cassyeopeia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>ATEEZ (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Space, Astral Mythology, Astrology, Childhood Friends, Episodes of Amnesia, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Major Character Death But Metaphorically, Major Character Injury, Mentions of Vega and Altair Myth, Royalty, Transmigration, wishing upon a star</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:34:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,021</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28318263</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyeopeia/pseuds/cassyeopeia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The scent of the cypress persisted in his lungs, and so he would embrace himself tightly as he would with another person. He could split the world in two like an apple if he wanted, but this body was so small that even the cold winds he summoned with his own hands seemed to blow him away. He could not bring himself to fight like he once did.<br/> He would kiss the broken tips of arrows, shards of the moon in between its phases, wilted shoots of cypress leaves— strands of Seonghwa’s hair, eyelashes that had fallen on the apples of his cheeks. He would kiss anything that was him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Thousand-Petalled Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyojinouji/gifts">kyojinouji</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I have once again went over the planned word count by at least 12k, but here we are (￣▽￣*)ゞ	<br/>I hope everyone is having a lovely Christmas in spite of all that's going on. ♡</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">“I’ve kept you at the foreground of my heart like a brother even after you betrayed me,” Hongjoong hissed, holding the tip of his sword just under Seonghwa’s Adam’s apple. “And you threw this forgiveness away.” His grasp was firm and confident, his expression immersed into his lines.</p>
<p class="p2">“I’ve warned you about your soft heart, how even a fangless viper would seek to pierce it, but you’ve never listened,” Seonghwa grasped the blade, yanking it towards his neck while smiling, taking Hongjoong by surprise.</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong then withdrew his sword, grabbing the hilt with both his hands and thrusting it seemingly through Seonghwa’s chest, but it met the little space between his body and his arm. Seonghwa tossed his head back feigning a painful scream, then bit the pigment seeds inside his mouth, tilting his head towards the audience just so the fake blood would pour quicker and smoother. Seonghwa coughed, allowing himself to smile cunningly until his last breath, but Hongjoong concealed his urge to laugh behind his tall collar.</p>
<p class="p2">The last lines of the play belonged to the narrator who sat suspended just above the stage on a swing disguised as a cloud. In the meantime, Hongjoong and Seonghwa were to remain frozen. Hongjoong bit his tongue, holding back his laughter at how Seonghwa savoured the sweetness of the pigment seeds.</p>
<p class="p2">As the lights dimmed, a moment of silence followed while Hongjoong passed the sword to his non-dominant hand, helping Seonghwa stand up with the other. Glimmering stars were released from their crates, floating like bubbles and illuminating the hall, and when they met they popped open releasing scintillating stardust, shedding a light like that of the sun.</p>
<p class="p2">The two joined hands and bowed to the audience, then to each other, before facing the cheering and clapping again, taking one final bow.</p>
<p class="p2">Without letting go of each other’s hands, they ran backstage and only dropped down to the floor when they arrived in their little changing room. Hongjoong dropped the sword and threw his cape away while Seonghwa ran to wipe all the excess liquid from his mouth. “I told you to be careful. This is a real sword. You could have cut yourself.”</p>
<p class="p2">“I know, but we’ve never been so intense, so I had to do it.”</p>
<p class="p2">There was a brief moment when they only looked at each other, smiling proudly yet melancholically, thinking about how they had to wait another year to act in that play again. Their cheeks were flushed and their makeup was smudged all over the apples of their cheeks, sweat trickled down their temples and they were exhausted beyond words after hours and hours of rehearsals only for one night.</p>
<p class="p2">Every year on the seventh day of the seventh moon there was a festival that celebrated the constellations of Vega and Altair through music, theatre and performances of light. They were yet too young to play the real roles of Altair and Vega, so they only performed in shorter plays.</p>
<p class="p2">“Hongjoong,” Seonghwa said suddenly, much too serious for the soft way he has always addressed him.</p>
<p class="p2">“What?” Hongjoong drank an entire cup of water, then proceeded to open the first buttons of his shirt.</p>
<p class="p2">“I,” there was a rush in Seonghwa’s voice. A surge of words that stumbled down his tongue until nothing came out. He blushed furiously while playing with the cuffs of his sleeves. Looking at Hongjoong wasn't an easy task. His smooth features like a fully unfolded flower, his rose-coloured hair and eyes that travelled the entire spectrum of blue according to the time of year. “I was wondering if I could kiss you.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Oh,” Hongjoong covered his lips with the back of his hand to conceal a gasp. He wished he had the luxury of a moment where he could wait and smile instead, then run into Seonghwa’s arms and kiss him as an answer. “Yes,” when in reality they were in a place that was not theirs at a time they had no control over.</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa looked towards the door, then hurriedly stepped into Hongjoong’s orbit, touching his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p class="p2">“No, I understand,” he smiled, cupping Seonghwa’s cheek with one hand, shocked with how much more beautiful Seonghwa looked up close. In the eighteen years they’ve known each other, they had little interest in expressing affection physically, but when it happened it was like an astral event was occurring.</p>
<p class="p2">Their time alone in that very changing room was as many seconds as it took to fall in love. It used to be five seconds, then eight, and as they grew older, maybe twenty.</p>
<p class="p2">The eyes that Seonghwa reserved only for Hongjoong had a sudden desire to sprawl out, to lay all of their colours with all the epithets he’d kept only for him. “Close your eyes?” He whispered, embarrassed at his own attempt to appear fearless. Hongjoong shook his head, then suddenly leaned in until the tips of their lips met. His sudden rush of courage then reposed, withdrawing for a millimetre, but Seonghwa was quick to fill the space. Their lips fully touched for a moment longer than the number of accumulated seconds they were granted their entire lives. It might have been just over a heartbeat, but it was enough for all the worry and the woe in the world to dwindle and regress into subconsciousness.</p>
<p class="p2">They took a step away from each other, and the nature of all things softened while they smiled. Their little fingers found each other, braiding together as they gently swung in the air. Seonghwa looked at how their hands sat together so peacefully, then he noticed a small trace of black on Hongjoong's wrist. He lifted his sleeve, then tilted his hand so he could read the words. "What's this?"</p>
<p class="p2">"Titles for the four ballads I wrote across these months. I suddenly remembered while we were rehearsing and I had to write them down."</p>
<p class="p2">"Will you ever sing them to me, I wonder." Seonghwa ran his forefinger across the four titles, gently like they were petals.</p>
<p class="p2">"On a good day," Hongjoong replied, and just then Seonghwa noticed the pink calluses on the pads of his fingers from playing the lyre. He would always make time to practice after rehearsals. "Tomorrow, hopefully."</p>
<p class="p2">“I’ll ask Father if I can work with you, then,” Seonghwa said.</p>
<p class="p2">“Really?”</p>
<p class="p2">“Why not? It’s been a while since we worked together. Remember how last time we finished two weeks worth of wishwork? It’s more fun when we’re together.”</p>
<p class="p2">“It is,” Hongjoong looked down at Seonghwa’s thumb caressing his knuckles. “Alright. I’ll see you in the office then.”</p>
<p class="p2">Regretfully they unlocked their pinkies, leaving only the tips of their fingers to touch so softy while the voices crept closer to their room. Foreign sound became white noise when they held hands, and seconds lasted as long as hours. Until the light of the lanterns pierced the room as the door swung open, they remained still, and Hongjoong drank in the earth and sky from Seonghwa’s skin and eyes.</p>
<p class="p2">They sat at tables facing opposing walls while their servants prepared them for returning home, brushing their hair, cleaning their faces of makeup and stardust clumped on their eyelids, and dressing them in their usual royal attire. Shirts dyed in deep, rich colours, chest adorned with rows and rows of golden strings and necklaces, and modestly gilded diadems gracing their heads.</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa and Hongjoong’s families have always had good feelings towards each other. They were only two noble families belonging to neighbouring kingdoms, until the year when the two princes came into existence hours apart. It all started with short visits and grandiose gifts, then it escalated into roads and bridges being built between the two kingdoms, to Hongjoong’s sister being one courting attempt closer to marrying Seonghwa’s brother. Fortunately for the two princes, it was not meant to be.</p>
<p class="p2">Neither could remember a time when they didn’t cherish each other more than at a platonic stage. They’ve attended the same classes, they’ve been fencing partners for more than ten years, and Seonghwa has sent Hongjoong more flowers than his brother sent to the princess. The concept of them living a life outside of each other was as foreign as a colour yet to be invented.</p>
<p class="p2">The two winged horse carriages already waited for them at the bottom of the theatre stairs. Hongjoong didn’t need to look to know that his was empty. Seonghwa’s Mother embraced him tenderly, kissing the crescent moon and arrow mark on his forehead as she expressed how proud she was of him. All those forms of affection Hongjoong has long lost hope in receiving from his Mother. But that night he received a tight hug from Seonghwa’s Mother instead.</p>
<p class="p2">“Your Resplendency,” the voice of an old man called Hongjoong, presenting himself with the sword he wielded during the play. It was one of the organisers of the festival. “Would you accept this as a gift?”</p>
<p class="p2">“But this is the theatre’s property.”</p>
<p class="p2">“It is, but we’ve decided to keep it only for Your Resplendency. Every year you’ve dedicated so much of your precious time to participate. You said you’re fond of this sword, so I’d like you to have it.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong’s wrists twitched, yet unsure whether to accept it or not. After a moment of hesitation, he accepted it gracefully, pulling back the purple cloth it was wrapped around when it sled off the hilt. “Thank you.”</p>
<p class="p2">He received looks of pity when they realised no one was going to come and greet him, but he said his quick goodbyes before embarrassment would settle into his cheeks. “I’ll see you…tomorrow maybe,” he said in an affable voice.</p>
<p class="p2">"I could come with you."</p>
<p class="p2">"It's fine." He smiled. "Don't make your Mother wait."</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong lied his head down on the carriage seat with the sword in his arms, dozing off until he felt the carriage landing abruptly. His mind was still reluctant to rest, always alert that he had lines to memorise and scenes to rehearse. He struggled to contain his smile, the stubborn blush in his cheeks, and the urge to touch his lips.</p>
<p class="p2">A line of ivory dressed servants awaited his arrival at the palace entrance with their heads bowed. Hongjoong dropped the sword in the first servant’s arms. “Just display it in the gallery,” then took off his cloak and passed it to his other servant, rushing inside to remove the jewellery that hindered his shoulders.</p>
<p class="p2">His building of residence was commonly known as the Ice Palace for its achromatic appearance, highly detailed architecture and the multitude of glass statues and fountains embellishing the front garden, like a glacier rising from the ground. It was built in an almost circular shape around a thousand-year-old crater, with pearlescent walls and roofs, and windows that reflected light like crystals.</p>
<p class="p2">The foyer was as spacious as a music hall, with white marble statues of Juno and Vesta guarding the grand entrances to the King and Queen’s separate quarters, and wall mounted sculptures carved in alabaster of Luna and Sol above each doorway, with walls painted in white and gentle shades of violet depicting landscapes and symbols of the family’s godly ancestry. In the centre of the foyer was a tree with black bark and white leaves whose flowers bloomed seven days before the solstices and lasted until the next full moon.</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong crossed the foyer and hurried up the glass stairs before any of his family members decided to greet him. He quickly changed his clothes to looser and more comfortable ones, then once again sprinted out of his room straight to a place called the <em>Chamber of Transient Crossroads</em>. It was a name too long and too fanciful for what was inherently a meditation room and other activities of the mind and spirit.</p>
<p class="p2">Inside that room, in the centre of a seal drawn in solar stardust sand sat a young man who was currently pouring the last envelope of sand to complete the circle. “Yeosang!” Hongjoong shouted, slowly closing the door behind him so the wind won’t blow the grains away, then kneeled just outside the circle. “Guess what happened.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang was an entity birthed from the Queen’s mind, entirely grown and bestowed with the knowledge of five generations of nobility. He always held his blond hair tied at his back, proudly displaying Minerva’s pink symbol on his temple. “Welcome home,” he said, closing the envelope and storing it into the inner pocket of his robe. “I don’t know, what happened?”</p>
<p class="p2">“You have to guess.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang blinked. He was created on the same day Hongjoong was born, with the prime mission of raising and taking care of both him and Seonghwa. Hongjoong had many memories of him as a child, but even he found it strange that most of them were of Yeosang holding him and rocking him to sleep when he was getting difficult. And a particular memory of two-year-old Seonghwa almost choking on a fig slice when Yeosang turned around for one second. “The final play was today.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Yes. And?”</p>
<p class="p2">“And I assume it went well.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Yes. And?”</p>
<p class="p2">“And…I don’t know, what’s this about?”</p>
<p class="p2">“About…Seonghwa.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Oh,” Yeosang wanted to smile. “You’ve had time alone again.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong nodded ecstatically, then cupped his hand around his mouth like he shared a secret. “He kissed me,”</p>
<p class="p2">“Did he? Ah, I should have guessed. And here I thought the blush on your cheeks was because you ran here.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Can you come to my room? I want to tell you about it.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang nodded and stood up, carefully stepping with his bare feet through the narrow spaces in between the sand lines.</p>
<p class="p2">Once in his room, the prince gathered all the music scores lying around, then threw himself onto his large bed, sinking his face into the pillow. He giggled sweetly, kicking his legs in the air, then fell still only to start his fit again. He rolled over, lying on his back and staring at the baldachin. “Now I’m questioning if it really happened. It was so short, and my vision still wasn’t adjusted from the stage lighting. I couldn’t even see him properly and— Argh!” He groaned loudly, slapping the pillow onto his face. “My face must have been a mess!”</p>
<p class="p2">“You said you couldn’t see him properly, so then he mustn’t have seen you either. I haven’t experienced anything like that, but I assume a kiss is more about what you feel rather than what you see. You know each other’s faces better than anyone else’s.”</p>
<p class="p2">“That’s true, but I only wanted to look at him for longer. He’s never looked at me like that. It doesn’t feel real…Eighteen years for just one second.”</p>
<p class="p2">“There will be other chances. This could be the beginning of something. Are you lovers now?”</p>
<p class="p2">“Lovers…No. Um, no, I don’t think— No. Is that what it means? I didn’t ask. Should I ask? I’m not sure what to do. But you,” Hongjoong lifted himself into a sitting position, holding the pillow to his chest. “You have to promise me not to tell Mother.”</p>
<p class="p2">“She loves Seonghwa. She would never do anything to hurt either of you.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Maybe so, but you know how unpredictable she is.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Not to me. You know I come from her mind. Therefore I know it well.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Does this mean you’ll tell her, or…”</p>
<p class="p2">“I will be able to silence myself until she asks. It is her eyes you need to be away from, not mine.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong sighed. “Why can’t you take my side more often? As family, I thought-”</p>
<p class="p2">“I am not family.” Yeosang said sharply, but his eyes remained gentle. “I am only a <em>familiar</em>. Do not confuse the two.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Well then you shouldn’t have taught me how to walk if you’re not family.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang stared at him blankly, unsure how to respond. His most used argument for all the things he’s ever done in his life was that he worked only under orders. Unfortunately, Hongjoong knew this. “Should I have not?”</p>
<p class="p2">“It was a joke.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Oh. Alright. Am I allowed to leave, then? I assume you want to rest.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Actually,” Hongjoong pretended to think “Seonghwa said he wants to join me for work tomorrow.”</p>
<p class="p2">“We’re two weeks behind in the wishwork department, so be prepared to spend hours there.”</p>
<p class="p2">“…I don’t think you understood me.”</p>
<p class="p2">“I didn’t?”</p>
<p class="p2">“I said…Seonghwa…wants to join me…for work.”</p>
<p class="p2">“And I said good luck.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong blinked repeatedly. And Yeosang blinked back. Hongjoong wished this <em>familiar</em> of theirs had a mind of his own sometimes.</p>
<p class="p2">Silence followed. Longer than the one it usually took for people to understand Hongjoong’s jokes.</p>
<p class="p2">“Oh,” Yeosang said after five eternities. “You want me to…”</p>
<p class="p2">“Yes?”</p>
<p class="p2">“…Find a way to be…late.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Please,” Hongjoong fell to his knees, still on the bed, holding his hands together over his forehead. “Everyone here listens to you. They’ll believe you no matter what you say. Just keep Mother busy for a few minutes. Even one minute is fine.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang couldn’t help but regard him with pity. He’s seen many people court each other and many couples walking hand in hand during banquets and feasts. He couldn’t understand what happened inside a person’s heart, but he could deduce that spending one minute alone with a loved one was nowhere near enough. “I will try.”</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p4">.·:·.<span class="s1">☽✧</span>    <span class="s2">✦</span>    <span class="s2">✧</span><span class="s1">☾</span>.·:·.</p>
<p class="p3"> </p>
<p class="p2">“…Would you please sit still,” Yeosang said while brushing Hongjoong’s hair. There was a stubborn tuft of hair on top of his head that he was trying to tame down.</p>
<p class="p2">“I can’t, I feel like my heart wants to burst out of my chest.”</p>
<p class="p2">“And you haven’t slept either.”</p>
<p class="p2">“How did you know?”</p>
<p class="p2">“Because you called me to keep you company?”</p>
<p class="p2">“I don’t remember that.”</p>
<p class="p2">“How convenient,” Yeosang deadpanned, tapping his shoulder to indicate him that he was done, then took Hongjoong’s violet sash and carefully laid it across his chest, then tied the two ends in a bow that resembled a flower. The sash was adorned with brooches and smaller pieces of jewellery all representing the family’s symbols. From their ancestral connection to the gods Nox and Aether through the sapphire decorations on his shoulder, to the family’s crest of encircled night queen flowers on the sash’s lower half. Next, Yeosang placed his diadem on his head, relieved that it now covered that one stray lock of hair. “I have to search for your Mother, so you’re lucky for now. I don’t know how long that will take, but if you want to kiss him again, you'd best be quick.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang saw things as face value and nothing less. Sometimes Hongjoong spoke over him, yelling at him not to embarrass him in front of Seonghwa even though the entity wasn’t sure what he said. Other times he threw a pillow at him, saying things like ‘Don’t say it like that’.</p>
<p class="p2">Then there were times— like in the present, when Hongjoong became embarrassed for no reason. Yeosang was confused again, as he thought that was the reason Hongjoong wanted time alone with the other.</p>
<p class="p2">“…I should tell Mother to give you an emotion or two.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang nodded cluelessly. “Alright.”</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong picked a white flower from the pots hung by the main flight of stairs while on his way to the office— another room with an unnecessarily long name. <em>The Quarters of Epithymastry and Genethliacal Astrology</em> it was called. It was a room that took quite a number of minutes to traverse, divided by a transparent wall that led to too many head injuries. This room had two doors right next to each other. But not regular doors. They were more like ornate silver gates with a blue, crystal ball floating above the first one, and an orange one above the second, each indicating the department. The blue one led to the Epithymastry office, and the orange one to the Genethliacal Astrology one. Essentially there were two rooms, but when this office was built, the people put too much thought into the symbolism behind this office rather than on its functionality. How <em>The Quarters of Epithymastry and Genethliacal Astrology </em>were, in fact, a single branch, a single science, so how could a wall divide them?</p>
<p class="p2">So they made this wall invisible. For the sake of the metaphor.</p>
<p class="p2">The <em>Epithymastry</em>— or the study of star wishing, was a responsibility bestowed upon Hongjoong’s family since the creation of time by Tempus. He was an uncle of some sort. His Mother’s family were thousands. It established a harmonious connection between the godly creatures and the mortals that lived on Tellus. When they wished upon a glimmering celestial body during a certain astral event, their wishes would be written down by the messenger sprites and placed into the office’s mailbox. Nobody called it a mailbox out of pride for their duties, but that was essentially what it was. Then this wish would be written down on a separate sheet along with the wisher’s astrological information and examined to see if it was going to be relevant in their future or if the wish was their true vocation.</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong opened the door illuminated by the glowing blue crystal, hiding the flower at his back. He searched the room carefully, his heart skipping a beat when he noticed Seonghwa standing by their usual desk, looking through a stack of papers and arranging them chronologically. Hongjoong snuck up behind him, placing the flower at his ear and greeting with a smile depicted in classical romances. Only when Seonghwa looked back at him did he realise he missed the chance to surprise him with a kiss instead. “You’re late,” Seonghwa attempted to appear bothered, but Hongjoong noticed how he adjusted his grasp around the papers.</p>
<p class="p2">“I’m not. We didn’t say what time we’d be here.”</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa said nothing to that, only shook his head at the other’s lack of strictness. He placed the papers in the empty stand on his own working desk, and once his hands were free, he took the flower from his ear and studied it. “…You stole this,”</p>
<p class="p2">“I did. What are you going to do about it?”</p>
<p class="p2">With a wave of timidity overcoming him, Seonghwa turned around and put the flower back. He wore a new cyan suit that Hongjoong hasn’t seen before, with golden, embroidered moonflowers on the hems and collar. His sash was a dark shade of purple, adorned with just as many precious stones as his own was. Right over where his heart was lied a brooch sightly bigger than his palm. A sylveren piece in the shape of a stag’s head with an arrow in its mouth, sitting inside a crescent moon. Its antlers and the arrow’s tip were encrusted with little diamonds, and the moon was as reflective as a prism. On his forehead there was a golden circlet of star grains in the shape of antlers.</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa’s origins were unknown. He was said to have been bestowed upon his Mother by the virgin goddess Diana one night when she went hunting. The Queen shot her arrow at an unknown creature which transformed into starry darkness that absorbed the arrow, then this mass of stars and cosmic atmosphere took the shape of a baby with the mark of a crescent moon and arrow on his little forehead.</p>
<p class="p2">He hardly ever talked about his ancestry, and when asked he would answer vaguely, but with a hint of frustration. He was raised to be humble and hardworking and to only show his royal status through his diadem.</p>
<p class="p2">“Those over there are yours,” he said, taking a seat at his desk, unbeknownst to him that Hongjoong has been counting the seconds since they’ve met in his mind.</p>
<p class="p2">He nodded albeit in that moment work was the least of his worries. He sat down next to Seonghwa, panic rushing through him when he saw the other already grabbing the glass quill. He seized Seonghwa’s wrist in a moment of unconsciousness, kissing the back of his hand, holding his lips still until he felt the skin slowly warming underneath them. “Hongjoong,” he said in such a mellow voice that Hongjoong felt his eyes impulsively gravitating towards him. Eyes that perpetually changed colour. The sky in his right eye, and the earth in his left. When days lasted longer than nights, his left eye brightened to hazel, and when nights were the longest, his right eye darkened to an Aegean blue. They were more fascinating to observe that any gemstone refracting light.</p>
<p class="p2">“Just,” was all Hongjoong could say as he cupped Seonghwa’s cheeks. The light was a lot brighter than the one in the changing room, and Seonghwa’s facial features were too intriguing to neglect. It was a thought that Hongjoong could not cancel in that moment. When they spoke— alone or not, he studied his face again and again like he read the script of the play they performed in every year. Everything rested comfortably in his head. Shade and detail. But Seonghwa was a craft he loved to remaster. He carefully wrapped his arms around his neck, giving Seonghwa the opportunity to stop him, knowing well enough he could never. Once their lips landed together again, Hongjoong flipped the hourglass in his mind and counted the seconds.</p>
<p class="p2">His lips felt softer than the day before, like freshly fallen petals that came to rest on his cheeks, the brush of a feather puff that escaped his pillow. He kissed him for three seconds longer than the first time. When this time of theirs seemed to have fallen still, he delved in again, just as gently, smiling when he felt Seonghwa’s lips arch upwards.</p>
<p class="p2">Once they drew apart for good, they reached for each other’s hands by instinct, caressing each other’s palms in circular motions. “I was worried. I thought you wouldn’t speak to me again.” Seonghwa said.</p>
<p class="p2">“You’ve known my soul since the dawn of time, and you still say this. You don’t know me at all, do you?"</p>
<p class="p2">“I do, but I was so scared. I haven’t kissed you in this life at all.”</p>
<p class="p2">“I still remember what your lips from your last life felt like. You were much older and you had a beard.”</p>
<p class="p2">“And you hated it,” Seonghwa furrowed his eyebrows, then Hongjoong pinched his chin like he used to in their previous life when he wanted to pull his beard. At present his skin was dew and glisten.</p>
<p class="p2">“…Very likely. My clearest memory is us having so much time alone.”</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa nodded once, squeezing his hands. Hongjoong has always been an astral force difficult to reach. He was either an oracle in a temple on the highest mountain which Seonghwa found by accident, or the commander of the rival army whom Seonghwa kissed as truce. Even he was shocked to find out that he and Hongjoong came into existence at the same time. “…So much we didn’t know what to do with.” He smiled at him and kissed his hands, suddenly remembering when and where they were. “Should we…work? Yeosang might scold us.”</p>
<p class="p2">“No, I told him to be late.”</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa dropped his head forward, softly slapping his forehead. “I should have known. But we should probably get started or else they might not let us work together again.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong knew, but didn’t comply until he stole one more kiss from him. He then rose from his chair and picked a thin pile of papers while Seonghwa’s shock wore off. A drastic transition from their usual gentle and moderately polite demeanour towards each other, to brazen gestures like kissing and sudden hand holding. It was something their hearts were more than willing to accommodate to, but worry still hung high by the back of their heads.</p>
<p class="p2">“Do you want to do it?” Hongjoong asked, bringing the paper with the oldest date at the top of the pile.</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa nodded.</p>
<p class="p2">In front of them was a heavy device that resembled a longcase clock, but much wider and made of an unknown black, metallic material. It was equipped with a mechanism where the date of birth, location coordinates, and the exact hour of the person’s birth had to be introduced manually in separate squares. It was a tiring process that took an irrational amount of time, which is why the people worked day and night to read charts before fulfilling wishes. Above that mechanism there was a glass panel where the birth chart was generated. The device was old, rusty in all the hidden places, but despite all the broken levers, it still functioned.</p>
<p class="p2">Bracing himself while stretching his fingers, Seonghwa sighed. “Alright, tell me the date.”</p>
<p class="p2">And so Hongjoong leaned his back against the device, crossing out all the digits once Seonghwa introduced them one by one. The more it took, the more it frustrated him that they spent all of those moments alone groaning and complaining about tired fingers when they could have kissed again.</p>
<p class="p2">Once finished, Seonghwa dramatically fell to the floor, fluttering his hands in the air as if he flicked water around. At about the same time, Yeosang made his appearance carrying a pile of scrolls. Judging by the colour they belonged in the historical department, but Yeosang dropped them into their usual corner like a pile of bricks and called it a day.</p>
<p class="p2">He bowed his head as a form of greeting, stealing a glance at the panel generating the birth chart. “Have you kissed yet?”</p>
<p class="p2">“Yeosang!” Hongjoong chided “You can’t ask people this!”</p>
<p class="p2">“If you haven’t, I can leave.”</p>
<p class="p2">“…You can stay, but please stop saying the first thing that comes to your mind. Please.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang nodded. Cluelessly. “Alright.” Then he noticed the way Seonghwa was rubbing his hands. Without being told to, he took them and started massaging them.</p>
<p class="p2">As Seonghwa grew up in a close and affectionate family, he was very fond of Yeosang as well. His Mother was also a priestess with more duties in her hands that numbers to her age, and throughout the years of his childhood, it fell on Yeosang to care for him.</p>
<p class="p2">“What is this wish about?” He asked.</p>
<p class="p2">“It’s very long, but this person essentially seeks a position of leadership in their field of study. They want to lead a business and are currently competing with others for this position.” He set the paper down, lifting his eyes at the birth chart that materialised behind the glass. He stared at it blankly, waiting for someone to begin the reading.</p>
<p class="p2">“What do you see?” Yeosang asked him.</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong’s hand twitched. He should have expected that parental tone from Yeosang. He took his time with formulating his answer, folding his arms over his chest, slightly squinting his eyes. He swiped his eyes across the birth chart while channelling his work mindset. He’s seen those charts more times than he’s seen his Mother. He switched between the Ascendant sign in Capricorn to the Medium Coeli in Libra, to the list below the chart where the houses were displayed, nodding to himself. “I’m getting a feeling of uncertainty from this person. I believe that in order for them to pursue what they wish in life they need someone to encourage them and to raise them up a little. I see an impartial mind, if not a little confusion as well,” he paused shortly “But at the time this person seems to be reluctant towards forming new relationships out of fear of opening up. I would not be surprised if they pushed people away or maintained themselves at a distance; force themselves into a lonely life even when this loneliness is in no way good for them. I see that their Chiron is in Cancer, so this could mean that this fear resulted from something in their early years. There must have been a certain lack of connection between them and their family during their childhood, and now they’re afraid of being let down or abandoned again.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Good,” Yeosang nodded, then looked at Seonghwa. “Your turn.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Well,” Seonghwa cleared his throat softly. “I think Hongjoong made a good point with this person’s impartial mind. The first thing I noticed was their Mars in Gemini is in opposition with their Mercury in Sagittarius, which tells me that there is potential for a position of leadership because they maintain a neutral ground, but they are also a quick and practical thinker. To enforce this, I’m seeing some persuasive and good organisational qualities from their Sun in Scorpio. I think they are the type to force their beliefs onto others, which could also make them appear quite arrogant at times. Then,” Seonghwa thought, drawing in another breath, “They have this desire to be known, and they are willing to overwork themselves for it. This overworking might have lead to a decline of the self, maybe a severe state of confusion that only an achievement or this granted wish could drag him out of.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang looked at the chart for several seconds, then nodded his head and left. Seonghwa exhaled, relieved. While he thought about his final answer he was meant to restart the device and prepare it for the second reading, but his hand hovered in the air just above the lever. “What are you thinking about?” Hongjoong asked.</p>
<p class="p2">“…Not yet,” he said, shaking his head out of his thoughts. “They’re not ready yet. But I believe they’re worth it, nonetheless. Hopefully they’ll cherish it.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong nodded, then went to return the paper in its designated stand, taking the second one from the pile with the oldest date. “You sound so thoughtful. Is there something more?”</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa took the flower from his ear, twirling it between his fingers. “I was thinking,” He turned around and looked at Yeosang, who was sorting out the historical scrolls. He didn’t say anything at first, parting his lips again and again. “…Yeosang?” He called him, and the familiar met his eyes calmly. Hongjoong thought he’s seen that expression on Seonghwa’s face before. It was something subtle that bordered into lack of expression, but Hongjoong was quick to notice how his eyes brightened like they did when he was too preoccupied with what was happening inside his mind to pay attention to the real world. “Do you have a birthdate?”</p>
<p class="p2">In situations like those they both wished Yeosang could express things. He wished his eyebrows and mouth would betray him when lying or concealing truth. “Her Resplendency created me on the same day you two came into existence. I don’t know which day that was.”</p>
<p class="p2">“…So you don’t remember when we were born either.”</p>
<p class="p2">Yeosang shook his head. “It’s not that I’ve forgotten. I was never told. I don’t know anybody’s birthdates.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Isn’t that strange to you?”</p>
<p class="p2">“I don’t know. There is work to be done. Excuse me.” He bowed his head, collecting the scrolls that were either incomplete or didn’t fit in any historical section and took them to the other office. Because he was an entity, he could travel through the invisible wall.</p>
<p class="p2">The two found each other’s eyes, unsurprised to see the same amount of concern. “…Would have been easier if we knew he could lie.” Seonghwa said.</p>
<p class="p2">“But your Mother said you shouldn’t be curious of your origins.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Yes, so did yours, and we’ve never questioned it. Why are we not allowed to know?”</p>
<p class="p2">It may have been the first time when Hongjoong failed to sympathise with him the way he always did. He felt the need to remind him of all the myths and legends and theories that revolved around his creation, all of them sharing course or motif. There was even a group of disciples at Diana’s temple his Mother served that dedicated their spiritual career to unfolding the mystery behind Seonghwa’s myth of creation.</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong, on the other hand, had nothing of the sort. He knew there was an innate connection between him and the god Aether, and that for an unexplained reason, his Mother has never been allowed to touch him, and she was also strangely preoccupied with the state of Hongjoong’s mind. On the other hand, there were many holidays and honorary days of the year that celebrated him. The ever-changing colour of his hair and eyes that indicated the seasonal cycle, his serene nature that brought peace and cleansed the ground and atmosphere. His existence was celebrated in the same manner as a birthday, only that it was always at a different time of year. There was enough about him not to let his curiosity wander, but not enough to keep him awake at night like it did with Seonghwa.</p>
<p class="p2">“What about your myth of creation? Is that not enough?”</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa dropped the moonflower in favour of holding Hongjoong’s hand. They still had seconds left of their remaining time alone. “Then who was I before? No one has ever been able to identify the sort of creature Mother shot with her arrow. Before I began my first life, who was I? <em>What</em> was I? And what happened to me during the time between lives? We should be the ones to know most about ourselves.”</p>
<p class="p2">“I think so too. But I also think that there’s beauty in mystery. Perhaps I do know my myth of creation. Maybe I do know where I come from, but I will never tell. This is how one keeps others wondering. Mystery will always invite more questions than the truth. Once something has been elucidated, people will leave it alone because they understand it. Or they will try to dig deeper into it until they stray from the truth. But where there’s mystery, there are always stories. More and more stories, always. You said I come from the stars, and that is not entirely true, but it is not wrong either. You know just enough to create a story about me.”</p>
<p class="p2">“But my story won’t be true.”</p>
<p class="p2">“No, but there will be some truth in it. Need I ask myself why the sky is there and why we breathe elysian air when Aether gave these elements to me? Some things exist simply because they should.”</p>
<p class="p2">He knew Seonghwa was unhappy with the vagueness of the answer, but he still admitted the truth in it with a soft smile. “That sounds very like you.</p>
<p class="p2">And Hongjoong returned this smile, more amused at Seonghwa’s growing concern over such a vague matter. “You’ve always loved making things more difficult for yourself. I’m sure that if you asked your Mother or the people at the temple they would tell you.”</p>
<p class="p2">“I know everything there is to know from other people. But I’ve never learned anything on my own. I’ve heard some have even began a new life on Tellus, and then they returned here to cleanse their souls. I’ve heard that they could also live more lives there. And I’ve been wondering if I am one of those people.”</p>
<p class="p2">“You want to go there?”</p>
<p class="p2">“I don’t know. I want to find out more things. I don’t think you know how much this has been bothering me.”</p>
<p class="p2">“I can only assume. How do you wish to accomplish this?”</p>
<p class="p2">Seonghwa watched him in silence. Hongjoong noticed how his lips twisted when he bit his tongue behind his teeth, uncertain if he should open the subject or not. “Do you trust me?”</p>
<p class="p2">And in these moments Hongjoong had to be the one to think rationally. He wasn’t particularly fond of being too serious. “Oh, no.”</p>
<p class="p2">“You don’t trust me?”</p>
<p class="p2">“I do, I just don’t like it when you ask me that. It’s always when you’re asking for trouble.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Well it can’t be trouble if you’re involved. You said you’re letting me be the troublemaker this time.”</p>
<p class="p2">Sighing, Hongjoong gestured him to continue. “Alright, what do you need?”</p>
<p class="p2">Taking him by the shoulders, Seonghwa took him to the corner of the office, away from lurking eyes and ears. “I have to return to Chaos. If there’s a place where I could learn about the beginning of the world— and myself, it’s their realm.”</p>
<p class="p2">“And…how do you expect to visit Chaos if you’re not dead? This body of yours won’t survive there.”</p>
<p class="p2">“This is where you come in.”</p>
<p class="p2">“You’re asking me to kill you?”</p>
<p class="p2">“No. I’m asking you to make a wish. On me.”</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong blinked repeatedly, trying to restart his systems. They have been told a million times growing up to fulfil their needs and wishes without ever expressing them vocally. They were celestial bodies with primordial godly blood running through their veins. They were above making wishes like mortals did. “You’ve lost your mind.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Maybe. But please. I need this from you. I’ve truly wanted this for a long time. You said you also want to know. For how many lives have we known each other? Are you not curious at all?”</p>
<p class="p2">“No? You know the level of disarray my mind has been for years now. I could not handle any more memories. I wouldn’t mind having a birthdate and a birth chart, and maybe I would love a vague idea about who I am, but nothing more. I’m fine like this. And if I can be completely honest with you, I knew this day would come. You’ve always been like this, but you’ve never asked me anything of this magnitude. I want to say yes, but I don’t know how much is on the line here.”</p>
<p class="p2">“You know I will always come back to you. And if I don’t, I will fight my way back to you. It’s <em>us</em>. It’s always been us.”</p>
<p class="p2">“Us,” Such a small word, but perfectly split in two. The ground and the sky. The earth and the ether. Enough for the world to collapse without the other.“I,” Hongjoong purposely stuttered to buy himself some time until anyone would walk into the office and they would be forced to halt the conversation. “…You promise?”</p>
<p class="p2">“I swear. We’ve started a beautiful thing, I don’t intend to ruin it. You wanted peace in this lifetime, I won’t be a threat to it.” He said, caressing the apple of Hongjoong’s cheek with the back of his finger.</p>
<p class="p2">Hongjoong nodded. He clenched his jaw while he formulated the wish correctly and wisely, vague so that the Universe would not solve it like a riddle. “I wish we received what we wanted.”</p>
<p class="p2">Nodding, Seonghwa took his hand, the one in which he held the flower. “I wish the same.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Eyes Closed, Godling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">In the early morning when they separated, Hongjoong ran to his room to watch Yeosang taking Seonghwa home. Yeosang reshaped his vital essence and transformed into his incipient form— a draconic creature with feathered wings and galactic eyes, gilded in shimmering golden scales, with a furry collar around his jaw and throat and a tuft at the end of its long tail that spread bright, glimmering stardust at every move. He lied down as low he could for Seonghwa to easily mount him, and when he was safely settled he spread his wings and leapt into the air, circling the ice palace before reaching Hongjoong’s window. Yeosang flew as close as he could for the two blossoming lovers to clearly see each other. They could not reach for each other, but their eyes laid on the other’s lips and cheeks as warmly as if they kissed. In their leave, Hongjoong sent a cluster of droplet sized stars that generated a gentle, silvery light, enveloping Seonghwa’s shoulders like a cloak.</p><p class="p2">They travelled into the morning mist until Hongjoong could see nothing of them anymore except the way the flap of Yeosang’s wings divided the sea of droplets and clouds.</p><p class="p2">He smiled nostalgically upon remembering Seonghwa’s fear of heights when he was little, then Yeosang took them both for adrenaline suffused rides along the Milky Way and other places so far away from home that they were shocked to find out how small their world was, in fact.</p><p class="p2">While he waited for Yeosang to return, he visited the gallery to see where his servants displayed the sword he received from the theatre. The place in question was just above the shelves of other trinkets he received in the past years as well as trophies and other prizes he accumulated from fencing competitions.</p><p class="p2">“What made you so nostalgic this early?” The voice of a woman said. It was gentle, but low, sometimes too dark, but assertive as a judge’s. She looked towards Hongjoong, noticing the new item. “Is that from the theatre?”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong nodded.</p><p class="p2">“It went well, then?”</p><p class="p2">“Where were you?”</p><p class="p2">The Queen approached him calmly. She wore her casual robes— black velvet with a boysenberry-coloured overcoat in a light fabric, minimal jewellery around her neck and wrists, and a thin, dark circlet around her head. She was a lady of refinement that instigated many men to pursue her, but her eyelashes were long enough to conceal the disinterest in her eyes. She was also a lady of minimum social interaction who could not be bothered to attend banquets if there were too many people. Her skin was smooth and ivory, often light grey, and her hair was indigo, fading to a dark plum shade towards her ankles, but it was an unexplained phenomena why the ends of her hair and her robes became invisible when they reached the ground. She always appeared to carry herself like a spectre. Sometimes steps would announce her arrival, other times she would appear miraculously. Her myth of creation indicated that she was a descendant of Achlys, the goddess of primordial darkness, the black mist that existed even before the formation of the universe, but in later writings she was associated with Nox.</p><p class="p2">“Your father has quite the temper lately.” Hongjoong did not need to look at her to know that she rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry. But I’m sure you did well.”</p><p class="p2">“I suppose so. Is Father here now?”</p><p class="p2">“No. I’ve sent him to a place where he can cool his mind. I couldn’t tolerate his choleric temperament anymore.”</p><p class="p2">“What have you fought about this time?”</p><p class="p2">“He fought me. I simply listened and that seemed to infuriate him.” She said, picking the trophy that Hongjoong received most recently. It was a silver sabre with crystal-encrusted guard with Hongjoong’s name and title carved on its stand. It was on the rare occasions when she left the palace to watch him compete, and the only time in her life when she stood up from her throne and applauded him. “It wasn’t about you this time, don’t worry.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong nodded again. When there was nothing else to see in the room, they both left and went on a stroll through the moonflower maze in the back of the garden. There was nothing to say at first, until Hongjoong filled the silence with a detailed story of all the wishes and charts he and Seonghwa have read for the past day and night.</p><p class="p2">“How is Seonghwa?” The Queen asked after Hongjoong finished his story. There have been things Hongjoong said that she couldn’t entirely agree with, but she was not in the right mood to explain why some of those people did not deserve to have their wish fulfilled.</p><p class="p2">“Oh, he seems to be concerned about his origins again.”</p><p class="p2">“Of course he is. He takes after his Mother. Why do you think his entire lineage has been nothing but poets, philosophers and geographers? Always preoccupied with the genesis of things. His Mother is just like him.”</p><p class="p2">“You sound like you’re against it.”</p><p class="p2">“Not really. I just wish they kept it within the family. They think that if we have no answers, we are being repressed and denied information. They become frustrated when they don’t have clear explanations to things. There’s beauty in mystery too. If only they noticed this.”</p><p class="p2">At her feet there was a moonflower vine that seems to have grown astray, so she picked it up and wrapped it back around the fence it fell from. Hongjoong was a step behind her, dissecting her words. He was also raised to believe in mysteries and to allow the world to surprise the eyes and soul with unexplained things. His Mother told him to believe that answers were a luxury, not a necessity, but in case something became necessary, then to rely on himself as a primary source for information.</p><p class="p2">“We’re not meant to be explained,” Hongjoong mumbled to himself.</p><p class="p2">“Yes. If others want to explain you, let them. Know as much as you need to not remain in the dark, but do not intrude in the ways of the Universe.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong chuckled. “It surprises me how much you want me to stay away from darkness. Even metaphorically.”</p><p class="p2">“Of course. Just leave it to me. Leave the darkness in my care and busy your mind with the elements you rule upon.”</p><p class="p2">“…Elements I rule upon-” He paused suddenly, interrupted by a sharp disturbance in his chest. It was the same sensation as approaching a flame with frostbit hands. At first there was a comforting warmth, then a sudden burning sensation that rapidly changed into a stinging one. Hongjoong laid his hand over the mark of Aether on his heart and looked at his Mother.</p><p class="p2">“What’s the matter?”</p><p class="p2">“I don’t,” he inbreathed, clenching his fist over where the mark was. He felt glacial shivers pulsating through him like his chest was the epicentre of an earthquake. “I don’t know, but I,” he hunched his back and embraced himself, struggling to understand the ice and fire colliding over his body. “I feel unwell? I think?” With shaking hands, he opened the first buttons of his shirt to reveal mark shimmering brightly. It became bigger than it was that morning, and it glowed like a portal to the upper world. “Mother?”</p><p class="p2">The Queen’s skin went pale, lifting her arms with the intention of catching him when his knees gave in, but she quickly withdrew before her finger would even touch his hair. She fell to her knees with one hand over her mouth and the other lingering pitifully just above Hongjoong’s cheek. Grabbing her robe, she rose to her feet and called upon Yeosang’s name.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">.·:·.<span class="s1">☽✧</span> <span class="s2">✦</span> <span class="s2">✧</span><span class="s1">☾</span>.·:·.</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p2">Hongjoong opened his eyes slowly, unsure why his visions were persisting even out of his dreaming state. The flash of a comet like the swing of a sword and large stars made of red matter playing over and over again until Hongjoong memorised the colour and the exact trajectory of the comet. At uneven intervals other elements appeared as well, such as the sound of running and huffing, and a hair tie being lost in the wind. He exhaled slowly, completely deflating his body until it was one with the mattress, and the next time he blinked he saw another comet-resembling thing flicker across his eyes. He winced, curling into himself and shielding his head with his arms.</p><p class="p2">“Your Resplendency,” Yeosang said softly, touching the back of his hand.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong gasped, then entirely opened his eyes again, slowly becoming aware that he was unharmed and that the wet trail on his temple was only sweat. Things flickered across his vision. So small and ignorant of the space around them that Hongjoong mistook them for stars.</p><p class="p2">“How are you feeling?”</p><p class="p2">Panting softly, Hongjoong struggled to lift himself up, gesturing for Yeosang to stop before he thought of helping him. “What happened?”</p><p class="p2">“A message from the gods in the form of a vision, your Mother said. You’ve been asleep for a day and a night, so it makes me think about what kind of message it was.”</p><p class="p2">“I’ve seen things that I can't make sense of. Even now, when I close my eyes, when I blink, I still see them. It looked nothing like a message.”</p><p class="p2">“What did you see?”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong sighed as he sunk his face into his palms. “Flashing lights. A whistle like that of an object swinging. And something that looked very much like a comet…I don’t think it was a comet. Or? Maybe. And…it may have been just a dream, but someone was running somewhere.”</p><p class="p2">“Was it dark?”</p><p class="p2">“Yes. Darker every time. It was a place under thick shade, or in the open night sky.”</p><p class="p2">Yeosang sat down beside him and leaned the back of his hand against his forehead to check his temperature. His face indicated nothing regardless of how much he stared at him. “There was an earthquake right after you collapsed,” he said, unsure about what to make of Hongjoong’s shaking eyes. The roots of his hair have gone a shade darker and maybe a millimetre of the tips became pink. It was subtle change, invisible to the common eye, but it was something nonetheless. “No one was injured. I’ve also heard deities saying they struggled to breathe until the earthquake was over. There may have been no air to breathe at all.”</p><p class="p2">He looked at Aether’s mark on Hongjoong’s chest while he spoke, reminding Hongjoong of the strange feeling that sent his systems into a sudden halt. At first Yeosang looked at him like he had something to add or to divulge, but then averted his eyes to his hair whose colour was continuously changing, warming up to a periwinkle hue. His bright eyes reflected the chaos in his mind more faithfully than any mirror. </p><p class="p2">“I need to see Seonghwa,” Hongjoong exhaled with a hand over his heart.</p><p class="p2">Yeosang knew what he was going to say just by looking at him, but a strange thing rung inside his chest. It wasn’t a feeling, as he wasn’t tailored to carry any, but a strange need to respond to things in a certain way before they would take a turn for the worse. One time in the past when he experienced this was when Hongjoong and Seonghwa were babies and very prone to hurting themselves, and he had to act quickly before one of them fell out of their beds.</p><p class="p2">He was only a familiar, but he found comfort in Hongjoong and Seonghwa always searching for each other. He felt safer when they were together.</p><p class="p2">Seonghwa was earth and night sky, and Hongjoong was the light and atmosphere that bound the two. The pure upper air that fed flora and fauna, that brought winds when the sun was greedy, and clouds when the forests Seonghwa wandered through were droughty. They were the two halves that created an entire against any primordial god’s will, against the nature’s will and against the family’s will. It was Yeosang who first thought to himself that how could people unweave the threads of time when they walked this ground and breathed pure air only by the graces of the two princes.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong dressed himself and opened the door to the balcony with a view to the moonflower maze. He climbed up on the stone sill, standing up. He took one step forward, and when he saw Yeosang flying towards him, he leapt into the air with his arms spread, landing softly through the fur from around the familiar’s throat. Hongjoong carded his fingers through the fluffy hairs, ducking his head just enough so that he won’t fall back.</p><p class="p2">The atmosphere above the clouds was too cold for him to open his eyes and enjoy the view he adored more than life itself. A sea so evenly filled with dusk-tinted clouds, and the kingdom-scape as seen through a veil of blue.</p><p class="p2">Yeosang glided smoothly through the air, cutting the clouds in perfect halves with his sharp wings, preparing for descent when the spire of Seonghwa’s palace came into view. He landed in the centre of the palace square, significantly emptier than other times, then leaned low until his chin reached the ground for Hongjoong to dismount him safely.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong blew a gentle puff of air into his palm, the palace gates swinging open at his command. The lack of security at the entrance and the watchtowers filled his heart with a feeling that weakened his knees.</p><p class="p2">A myriad of voices came from beyond the entrance doors. The voice of a man and the voice of a woman whom Hongjoong recognised as Seonghwa’s Mother were vehemently arguing, then the Mother’s broke down into a series of loud sobs.</p><p class="p2">Against all courtesy laws, Hongjoong commanded the doors to open with just a sharp intake of breath, finding himself before a scene that he has only seen described in a script at a theatre.</p><p class="p2">Seonghwa’s Mother sat atop of the stairs with a bloody fabric into her arms, holding it tightly with tears raining down her cheeks. Beside her was a tall, dark robed man— Seonghwa’s brother, carrying someone wrapped in white. The hall fell into a primal silence, with only the ichor dripping down from that someone’s arm and against the amber carpeted stairs.</p><p class="p2">Fearfully, Hongjoong raised his eyes from the bloody hand to the uncovered feet that he knew better than his own palms. Those bright pink and gently bruised feet from all the night hunting, those slight indentations on his forefinger and thumb from the millions of times he pinched the bowstring. “Seonghwa,” as the man who carried him approached him, Hongjoong staggered back against Yeosang, who caught him by the shoulders. “Seonghwa?” Across the white sheet that covered him were bloodstains that so devotedly resembles painted roses blooming from his chest. His heart clenched, and the air became too thick of a substance to breathe.</p><p class="p2">Following closely behind the man who carried the body was Seonghwa’s father, who was holding a thin, long box inside of which lied a bloody sword. “Do you recognise it?” The King asked, and Hongjoong had to slap both his hands across his mouth to repress himself from screaming.</p><p class="p2">It was a blade that he thought it meant no more than a testimony. One that he wielded during the portrayal of someone else, with hundreds of people watching him. A sword whose blade Hongjoong knew was sharp, so he warned Seonghwa not to play with it too bravely. If he looked at its grip for too long, he could recall what it felt like to hold it, to swing it according to the choreography so he won’t hurt Seonghwa.</p><p class="p2">“We don’t recognise it,” Yeosang replied in his stead. “His Resplendency doesn’t wield swords.”</p><p class="p2">“You were the last person seen with him.”</p><p class="p2">Yeosang nodded. “I brought him home. He asked me to stay with him until he fell asleep. His room was clear. And so was our journey home.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong looked at him hopelessly, tears slowly flooding his eyes. He breathed unsteadily, with his hand wrapped around Yeosang’s wrist as his only anchor to reality. A black veil covered his eyes— a shaded place or a night sky joined by the light of a comet and an indistinguishable sound. “Seonghwa,” he exhaled, looking for Seonghwa's brother, and dictated by blind impulse, he dashed in the same direction. “Seonghwa!” But the guards covered the entrance to the corridor, pointing arrows at him. At his feet was a droplet of ichor that fell into shape like a rose’s petal.</p><p class="p2">Seonghwa’s Mother approached him, touching his cheek with a hand wet with tears and bloodstained fingers. She was a tall woman with sharp features and the body of an unfettered huntress hidden beneath aureate robes, her Diana’s mark also resting on her forehead. Misty clouds shrouded the moon when she cried. “You tell your Mother that I’ll be alright.”</p><p class="p2">But all it took was a blink for two tears to roll heavily down Hongjoong’s cheeks. “I don’t understand. I was with him. I worked with him.” He stopped himself, his tears mingling with the ichor at his feet. He panted while the Queen wiped the tears on his chin. “When he left, I— a message. I received a message from the god of the upper sky.”</p><p class="p2">The Queen tilted her head. “From Aether? What did he say?”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong closed his eyes and forced every visionary image at the brow of his memory. Every form of darkness— cypress tress under the moon, the number of stars in the sky, that bloody flashing light, the number of steps that person took, and the description of how their feet sounded against the grass. “But I,” he swallowed a sob, wiping his second wave of tears. “I was too late? I was late. I could have— I was late, I could have saved him. I could have done something. I could have…” Sighing, he tried to meet the Queen’s eyes again. The same eyes as Seonghwa’s. Shape and colours.</p><p class="p2">“And yet you were the one who received that sword back at the theatre.”</p><p class="p2">A gelid crest of raw fear surged through him, from the tips of his fingers to where Aether’s mark stung his chest. He looked at her as if he was restrained and arrows threatened to pierce his throat and jaw if the turned his head. “No,” he shook his head pitifully, and the Queen wiped his cheeks again with a grievous smile on her lips. “No, I wouldn’t. I would never hurt him. Not after a lifetime of loving him when people said I shouldn’t. You call me the Upper Sky and the Bright Air, but what am I without him? I have the ichor of Nox running through me, but what is the night without the moon he rules over?”</p><p class="p2">He tried to recall a time when he loved Seonghwa as softly as he would clean the gemstones on his crown, but in his mind arose only recent times when he loved him like he was the sword twisting in his heart.</p><p class="p2">The Queen smiled softly, drying his cheeks one last time. She folded Seonghwa’s shirt neatly, then held it over her heart. “I don’t think you should return here,” she said in her ginger voice, like when she praised them for their performance. She was a joyful being with a soul like that of a caged bird with the power to bend the bars with her beak alone. "I am not usually this kind."</p><p class="p2">And so Hongjoong found himself alone in the hall of a palace that was something of a second home to him. The floor decorated in mosaic amber tiles, the vines of ivy and grape pouring from the sills and awnings, the large windows with a view to the family’s private hunting grounds.</p><p class="p2">“It’s not real,” he said, first to himself, then he looked at Yeosang and said it once again. “This is not real. None of this is real.”</p><p class="p2">Yeosang nodded, listening to him out of duty, but he’s never struggled to listen to him until then. He also liked to think it wasn’t real.</p><p class="p2">Guiding Hongjoong outside of the palace, he looked at the sky, his shoulders falling heavy upon seeing the drastic number of starts that failed to appear. Once transformed, he flew slowly, allowing Hongjoong to cry on his back in peace without the worry of falling. He soared and soared until once again above the clouds, then tilted his body so that Hongjoong might lose his balance and finally fall. He dropped the prince softly on top of a large cloud, then flew in circles around him as he once again changed forms. He then became a much smaller creature of the same draconian species with more fluff, less scales, and horns so soft and long that they looked like a rabbit’s ears.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong held him in his hands while he cried.</p><p class="p2">He cried unconsciously, tears streaming down his face simply because his heart would not stop aching, while his mind was in complete denial. He was still asleep, and the sky above him with millions of missing stars was also part of his vision. </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p5">.·:·.<span class="s3">✧</span> <span class="s3">✦</span> <span class="s3">✧</span>.·:·.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">North of the Ice Palace were the ruins of an old temple that served a small god thousands of years ago. It was not frequented as it was the property of the royal family, but for the past eighteen years it became Hongjoong and Seonghwa’s playground.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong sat with his back against a stone bench, staring into space while tears dried on his cheeks. Ahead of him was a pit that once represented a pool of cleansing water supplied by the waterfalls that streamed from massive amphoras situated atop of the second floor balconies. They were sere but in surprisingly good condition. The amphoras were positioned horizontally, so no rain could ever fill them no matter how violently it poured.</p><p class="p2">For the past days, the ruins became Hongjoong’s refuge. He walked through the temple and its empty chambers, recalling every game Seonghwa once came up with. Most of them involved him boasting about his skills with the bow. Hongjoong often sat down and watched him with a pout on his lips, envious on his abilities and dexterity. Seonghwa’s bow was a crescent moon and its arrows were only lines of light like those of fallen meteors. The bow was a divine gift that no one else could touch. When he shot an arrow, Diana’s mark on his forehead glowed like gardens after a rain when the sun rays made leaf and petal sparkle like gemstones.</p><p class="p2">He saw twelve-year-old Seonghwa running away from him with the bow in his hand, and the script for the festival play in the other, so unwilling and stubborn to memorise his lines.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong thought it was around that age when his heart started beating strangely each time he saw Seonghwa. As years passed, Seonghwa was the one who started complementing Hongjoong on his appearance and his attire, then around fifteen he started sending him flowers. It was all too pure and too young for people to even to wonder if it was more than just platonic love. </p><p class="p2">In the distance he heard the sound of slow steps approaching him. He made no effort to move.</p><p class="p2">“I wanted to leave you alone, but Mother said I should search for you,” Yeosang said apologetically. He was more than ten steps away from him, but in all that silence his voice resounded just right.</p><p class="p2">Yeosang worked for both of them ever since Hongjoong started isolating himself. It fell onto the familiar’s shoulders to bear with all the arguments between the King and Queen, the indirect scoldings, and the threats to exile him.</p><p class="p2">“It wasn’t meant to happen like that,” Hongjoong mumbled, then pushed himself up with a painful hiss, touching his back just under where it hurt most. “Never like that.” He whispered, the only sound he could make in his shock.</p><p class="p2">Yeosang looked at him. His lips moved, then suddenly stopped. “I know, and I’m sorry for this, but,” he spoke cautiously, taking two more steps closer to him. “I thought this is what you both wanted.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong furrowed his eyebrows, surprised that Yeosang knew the truth of something he has always been against, and yet he wasn't scolding him. “He was not meant to bleed. Not like that. I never wanted to see him bleed ever again.”</p><p class="p2">“…Again?”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong looked at the dark ground, trying to determine if his sudden need to share was an act on impulse or a decision that he held in his heart without knowing. “Yeosang, do you swear I can trust you?”</p><p class="p2">“Of course.”</p><p class="p2">“Without Mother hearing?”</p><p class="p2">“I,” Yeosang’s eyes wavered for a moment so short that no human eye could catch. “I am in little control of that. But I will try.”</p><p class="p2">Afraid of just that, Hongjoong kept quiet, yet to reach a decision. “You know, Seonghwa and I have,” but it was a desperate situation in which he would rather deal with the consequences given by his family than those of the Universe. “We’ve known each other for much longer. Longer than you’ve known us. Even before we were born, I mean. I’ve known him for…I can’t even tell how long. Lives. So many lives. And I’ve lost him in many ways. When he died, I died shortly after. But it was never like this.”</p><p class="p2">“Does this mean that we will lose you too?”</p><p class="p2">“I don’t know. A part of him is still alive somewhere. Enough of him is alive to keep <em>me</em> alive. But for now, I don’t know where.” Something small like a shard of thought traversed his memory lobe and caused him to stagger backwards until the back of his head hit against a column, hand clenched against his chest where Aether’s mark was burning his skin. His entire body went dry with how much he wept, but grief still held him restrained, wringing him of essence and life. “And I might- I might have to return to Chaos somehow.”</p><p class="p2">“Chaos?”</p><p class="p2">The stygian canvas at the beginning of the Universe, the god of all gods and the sculptor of everything that came to be in existence. Chaos was the void Nox arose from, who was the mother of Aether and by this connection Hongjoong was made to believe that Chaos was family, or at least a humble part of the same family tree with no true awareness of him. Yeosang thought he would be more surprised at the news. “How does one reach Chaos?”</p><p class="p2">“I don’t know how others would, but we...we need to die. Metaphorically. Or maybe not to die, but to cease existing in this world in order to be fully present in Chaos’ realm. I know,” Hongjoong broke off, touching his Aether’s mark. “I know it in here. That I’ve been there before. My mind doesn’t remember it, but the Aether in me does. Chaos’ realm is a familiar place to me, though I don’t recall it. Last time I visited them was before I started this life.”</p><p class="p2">“I heard it’s not a good place to be in. I know nothing of it, but I know that there should be a great price to pay. What does it entail?”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong smiled, though it wasn’t a joyfully. It was the kind of smile that would conceal shock. “My memories, very likely.”</p><p class="p2">“How so?”</p><p class="p2">“It happened before. I always ask them to make me forget things. It’s like a baggage I always have to carry before being born again. But now I will have to ask them to return it to me. At the price of my other memories. There are lives I’ve lived that are precious to me and that I never wanted to forget about. But others hurt me. They hurt my ability to memorise. They devour pleasant memories, and the inside of my mind becomes a war zone. They are the only ones I am sure they could provide me with answers and still remain inside the frame of the wish I made.”</p><p class="p2">Noticing how his fingers were shaking, Yeosang removed his cloak and wrapped it around Hongjoong’s shoulders. “I came from your Mother’s memory, so if you ever forget something, you can come to me. I will remember things for both of you. But I hope nothing will happen.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong watched him with pondering eyes, reaching for his cheek to wipe a tear that was yet to fall. “…You look like you want to say something more.”</p><p class="p2">“Just…It is not the same without him here. It is not the same seeing <em>you</em> without him. But while he is searching for himself, you must never forget who you are. This is what I wanted to tell you. You must not forget what you can do.” Yeosang said, laying a hand just over Hongjoong’s back, slowly guiding him outside of the ruins. The moon was barely visible in the sky. At that time of night, Minerva’s owls flew towards him to guide him back home.</p><p class="p2">“You’ve never talked so much about us.”</p><p class="p2">It did not seem like the right moment to summon memories or to express things in their natural form without knowing if they might be hurtful. Yeosang wished he was able to lie. “Seonghwa’s soul has been made for the people. He was made to live among people. To bear stars so clear that would guide travellers through the night, and a moon so bright that makes people wonder why and how. He was created to share and teach, to build shelters in uninhabited places and to feed the mouths of the starving,” he said, rhythmically like describing a dream. “I am sure he is in a good place. And that he is doing good things.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong almost wanted to smile, but in those times he could only smile with no one around him. He would touch his lips, reminiscing upon how Seonghwa’s felt touching them, and he would smile stealthily until his heart awakened from its numbness and whipped him over the eyes with grieving storms. Every word the familiar said was as truthful, transcribed from Hongjoong’s heart. From that same heart that has known him for so many lives. He wanted to look at the moon like he always did when he felt sorrowful, but instead he looked at the ground, slightly digging his heel into the soil as he stopped walking. “What about me?…What am I?”</p><p class="p2">But Yeosang was the one to bravely look at the fading moon, then gradually lowered his eyes to the cypress leaves cupped within the divine air’s hands, spreading their warmth and sylvan fragrance so that one may carry the other in breath and lungs, sound and throat. “Your soul has been made for the world above. You are divine atmosphere, purified air, and the crown of Chaos. Your gifts and powers were made to accommodate godly life. It is by your grace that we can live and breathe, and by your will that we can watch upon people and grand them wishes. You have humbled yourself enough. You are a god of things untouchable. Let this be a lesson to you, so that you may become so strong that the sky will bow at your feet and bring you the answers you want. You needn’t wish for things again when you are <em>wish</em> itself.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p6">.··.<span class="s4">✧</span> <span class="s4">✦</span> <span class="s4">✧</span>.·:·.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">Those were words he was surprised to hear from someone who has known him for a single life. They were said gently and with no hidden intent. His mind was still a salvageable place, unlike his heart. His poor excuse of a godly heart beat itself to death in his ribcage whenever the moon was to rise. The scent of the cypress persisted in his lungs, and so he would embrace himself tightly as he would with another person. He could split the world in two like an apple if he wanted, but this body was so small that even the cold winds he summoned with his own hands seemed to blow him away. He could not bring himself to fight like he once did.</p><p class="p2">  He would kiss the broken tips of arrows, shards of the moon in between its phases, wilted shoots of cypress leaves— strands of Seonghwa’s hair, eyelashes that had fallen on the apples of his cheeks. He would kiss anything that was him.</p><p class="p2">There was no bandage, no ointment or cure to heal what only time could touch, but he was raised to be a gentle thing with no courage to dig his own hand inside his open wound and pluck the sorrow out. He was raised to exist in his purest form so that the gods may jubilate in vigour and imperium, to bring the day and clear skies when his Mother would bring the evening, and in the morning his sister would disperse the night. He had no awareness of soul mortality, of things coming to an end, of people not returning.</p><p class="p2">“…People could only dream of being loved by Seonghwa as much as you are,” Yeosang said one night while they were taking a short break from wishworking. No one would speak to Hongjoong the same way they did before. No one dared to accuse him or speak ill of him</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">As days advanced, his agony grew to such proportions that the Universe empathised with his grieving. Mornings came late, and the sky’s dome started fading in colour. Strange lights appeared across the night sky, unexplained astral phenomena occurred too quickly for the mythographers and astronomers to explore. New planetary objects developed out of unnamed minerals, some so small that would explode days into creation, dissipating into a rain of dark, heavy droplets.</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Unfolding Helianthus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Hongjoong kneeled before his Father’s glass throne, with his forehead dug into the alabaster floor and the sharp tip of two spears puncturing the nape of his neck. Hoarfrost was melting on the tips of his hair and fingers, but his skin was as cold as to freeze them into snowflakes. With trembling lips and chattering teeth, he cracked his eyes open to see his own shadow nearly invisible on the clear floor.</p><p class="p2">The throne room was like a different world from the rest of the palace, where the ceiling was a perpetually open portal to the sky of Caelus’ heavenly realm, and the frost that fell from its clouds found rest right over Hongjoong’s shoulders.</p><p class="p2">“You’ve learned nothing,” the King said. He opened his palm when the first full snowflake fell, but it melted before it reached him. It never snowed in the heavenly realm, unless Caelus felt too warm.</p><p class="p2">“I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p2">The King was a tall man with a heavy built and a beard to express more wisdom than age. Spiritually he was younger than the Queen and was described by her as having ‘the temperament of an adolescent’, but in front of his children he wore a mask as resilient as stone that portrayed the father he was depicted as in his myths.</p><p class="p2">“Why are you sorry for? Let me hear it from you.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong sighed tiredly, lifting his head to see his father turning his back at him. “I’m sorry that the Universe has to suffer with me. I’m sorry for being selfish.”</p><p class="p2">“But why must the Universe suffer with you? Why must you punish this world and kingdom for your own grieving?”</p><p class="p2">Shaking his head, Hongjoong tried to draw a full breath. “I’m sorry.” Next, he closed his eyes, readying himself for whatever his Father was about to say. It was not the first time the King’s familiars captured him like a thief instead of asking for an audience using words.</p><p class="p2">“There are astral plains emptier than those words. What made you soften so? You’re not a child anymore. Why must we find ourselves here again for such a trivial thing?” He asked, but by the soft change of tone, Hongjoong assumed there was something to add. “I’ve never said you shouldn’t weep, but never at the price of the world. I too have wept when my grandfather devoured my little siblings out of pride and mindless rage. If the world must collapse, then so it shall, but only by its own will.” He paused, then Hongjoong heard the soft rustle of his clothes and his hand jewellery clinking when he moved his hand. The familiars pulled their spears away from Hongjoong’s neck and the prince slowly lifted himself up, rubbing the nape of his neck.</p><p class="p2">“I know, but pain like this has never welcomed me warmly.”</p><p class="p2">Their eyes met for a long and calm moment, where the King wanted to feel pity for him. His wrath against the past was his own, but in this life he was titled a father before he was named King, and he did not want this rage to carry over to his children. He wanted them wise, diligent, and nothing like how his divine ancestry was. “Not even the stars cried after him,” he said, looking at the portal. It wasn’t snowing anymore.</p><p class="p2">For a light bringer, Hongjoong’s inner body has been nothing but rayless. Dark, even through dawns and bright noons. But as soon as his father spoke with such heartlessness, something ignited him from within, hair by hair and vein by vein. A tingle on top of his tongue like a need to speak in the face of injustice, an urge to guide someone towards the right path. “He was named after the stars, Father, how could they not?”</p><p class="p2">“They’ve faded. They’ve dimmed themselves. You’ve mourned in the name of every fallen star. You’ve mourned more than enough.”</p><p class="p2">“…It would have been wrong of me not to.”</p><p class="p2">“Why? Do you,” the King trailed on, lifting Hongjoong’s chin with the tip of his onyx sceptre. “Feel guilty, perhaps?”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong gasped, grabbing the head of the sceptre and moving it away from his face. He rose to his feet and stepped away from the eye of the portal. A caged bird slept in his chest, and the wooden bar it rested on trembled with an upcoming seismism. But soon came the time for this bird to awaken and thrash its way out in the world of lost love and longing that Hongjoong tried to sever himself from. “I do. And I don’t want anyone to forgive me. I will do better. I won’t allow anyone else to suffer in my place.”</p><p class="p2">The King smiled insincerely. “For a cloudless sky, Hongjoong, you invite so many storms,” he took one setback, then turned around, folding his hands at his back, holding his sceptre tighter than he usually did. “But this was the last one you’ve allowed to pass through this kingdom. This I can promise you. You’ve awakened even the temporal gods, and Mercury has never visited with so many messages from the sky and nature deities, pleading and worrying. I’ve never felt so ashamed to call you my son.”</p><p class="p2">“…Don’t call me your son, then.”</p><p class="p2">“Hongjoong!”</p><p class="p2">“What do you want me to say? Nothing will please you. I’ve promised you things, and you won’t believe me. If you’re ashamed to call me your son…then don’t.”</p><p class="p2">“If your Mother loved you less, I would carve that Aether’s mark out of your chest. Leave.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong bowed his head and closed the door behind him as silently as he did when he attempted his first escape. Without any other ambition to fulfil in that moment, he went to his room to change into his formal wear, then headed to the wishworking office. He wore his sash and his diadem, and his cloak over his arm.</p><p class="p2">Yeosang was sent on an expedition with a group of astronomers to explore the composition of the newly fallen meteorites, but also to help evacuate and rebuild the homes of those who suffered in the aftermath of the cosmic storm. The Queen closed the gates of the palace to prevent rumours and misinformation from spreading, and appointed Hongjoong’s sister, Inoe, to stay beside him.</p><p class="p2">“Gave you one last chance, I take it,” she said to him right when he walked into the office. There was already a birth chart on the clock’s screen, which she read without interruption with her arms folded over her chest.</p><p class="p2">“We can call it that. Honestly, I’d rather he yelled at me and exiled me. At least I would know what went through his heart. This way I cannot tell if he wants to murder me in my sleep or not.”</p><p class="p2">“I think we have Mother to thank here,” she smiled, lowering her eyes from the screen. She took Hongjoong’s diadem off, running a hand through his hair to smoothen it. “How do you feel? Honestly.”</p><p class="p2">“…I would prefer it if I didn’t. I’ve never hurt like this before, I am unsure what to do so nobody else would suffer.”</p><p class="p2">“Nobody else?”</p><p class="p2">“You’ve seen what happened outside. I am to blame for that.”</p><p class="p2">“Father told you this?” Hongjoong nodded once. “…I should have been there,” she paused, returning to resetting the clock to a blank canvas before folding the paper and placing it into the stand of wishes unable to fulfilled.</p><p class="p2">“He would have blamed you for siding with me,”</p><p class="p2">“Oh, no, he daren’t say a word to me,” Inoe said, and she was right. Her face and mind were a mirror to her Mothers, but in regards to her appearance, she was an antithesis of her. She was bright haired and brighter robed, with a veil of morning stars upon her shoulders and dew adorning her rosy cheeks, with Aurora’s mark on the back of her right hand. She was the goddess of morning bringing, the bridge between her Mother and Father’s night, and Hongjoong’s bright, clear sky. “Come here,” she lifted her hand, inviting Hongjoong next to her. She stood by the balcony window with her arms folded across her chest.</p><p class="p2">There was a crack in the sky like that onto a glass surface, with little fissures at every end, simulating the appearance of a cotton flower branch. “If he told you that your anguish is to blame for this, he’s partly wrong. It’s not your suffering that made his happen. It’s what went through your mind at the time when you had little control over your emotions. When we cry as gods, we must think of it as a cathartic medium. All of this must have happened because you thought the world was a horrible place, so the sky has changed according to your vision of it. I think it’s time for you to realise what you mean to this world. This is the youngest body you’ve ever lived in, but you are as strong as you were ten lives ago. I know this because I’ve been with you that long.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong smiled woefully. At her, then at the sky. “…I do feel a little helpless in this body.”</p><p class="p2">“It’s alright. We all did. But please remember what I told you, and don’t let Father make you believe otherwise.” She opened the balcony door and stepped out, warming her hands up inside her sleeves. There was something beautiful about the sky opening up and light pouring out of the littlest cracks despite it being past dusk. “It’s also this…The elements that we rule over sometimes love us back too much. They too suffered. And we have seen how much the moon and forests loved Seonghwa.”</p><p class="p2">When she said that, Hongjoong wished their Father was present. “Thank you,”</p><p class="p2">“No need to,” she looked at the sky for a moment longer, then concluded the conversation with a tired sigh. “We should probably read some charts now.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong agreed with a tired nod.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">‘<em>Let him remember me</em>’, the first wish read. Hongjoong looked for the second part of the text. Wishes were hardly ever that short. If they were short and easy to decipher, he would pass them to his sister, leaving the more difficult ones that took much longer for himself. This new habit resulted in him being in the office for more hours than anyone has ever been. He worked far slower, but his objective was to never be accused of neglecting his duties again.</p><p class="p2">Both him and Inoe believed that poorly formulated wishes were not considered and analysed as thoroughly as the other ones. There have been wishes such as ‘I wish for a lover’ that she did not spare another glance at. But there was something about the one she was currently holding that she could not overlook. ‘Let him remember me’ carried too much underlying hope and yearning for her to not offer it a chance. She quickly read through the person’s chart, hid the paper in a secret folder, and moved onto the next one with a soft smile on her lips.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">.·:·.<span class="s1">✧</span> <span class="s1">✦</span> <span class="s1">✧</span>.·:·.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">A month or so went by, and a similar wish returned. ‘<em>I don’t want him to forget me</em>’. Hongjoong read it twice, then other three times like it was written in a foreign language. Uncertainty filled his hands and with tremors, but he was fearfully quick to shake himself out of it and set the paper aside.</p><p class="p2">He visited the ruins during every break, removing his clothes until he was left with only the tunic he wore underneath, running wildly through the cypress trees and making bows like Seonghwa once taught him. He climbed atop of the temple’s roof and sung to the moon, sharing tales and secrets that only he and his heart knew.</p><p class="p2">At times Yeosang would fly him to the clouds, and the clouds would gather around him like flowers to light, lifting him higher towards the moon until they would freeze. Hongjoong tended to the moon, covering her crevices and fissures with silver and crystal glowing brilliantly to blind the sun until she would decide to shine on her own.</p><p class="p2">He named new formations of clouds after Seonghwa’s other names, epithets or even anagrams. He picked up his lyre for the first time after the incident to transpose Seonghwa’s myths of creation into songs and ballads so that the essence of his being may live through sky and sound.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2">‘<em>I want him to know I’m here</em>’ the third wish came after the next new moon, by a person whose birth chart was illustrated on the clock’s screen, Inoe currently reading it. She wasn’t interested in what the chart said as much as she was curious about the date and the astral event correlated with the wish. This came from a person who was very familiar with celestial activity, only sending messages to the world above when the passage was open and his wish more likely to be received, like during Perseid meteor showers. She pretended to inspect the chart, quickly remembering that she has seen it twice before. “Look at this,” she said too suddenly for Hongjoong to register what was going on.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong knew what it was. He’s seen many of those before. Wishes which were not, in fact, wishes, but needs and wants that had no place in the office, but Hongjoong had an admirable photographic memory when it came to sequences of numbers and dates, and he remembered he’s seen that birthdate before. His heart started thrumming in his chest, once, then twice, then over and over again like a surge of memories across the dam he’s built around his heart. He calmly placed the paper down, then stood up from his seat and grabbed Inoe by the wrist, taking her to the room beside the throne hall.</p><p class="p2">The room in question had the shortest name, but was also the largest in the palace, nearly as wide as a city square. <em>The Cloak Hall</em>, it was called, the name speaking for itself. It was a room dedicated only to the King’s most prized cloak. But not just any item of clothing. It was sewn in comets’ dust tails thread and lined with fragments from Saturnian scythes and sickles arranged as neatly as to form a mirror. Knowing Hongjoong’s intentions, Inoe picked eight stars from the shoulder of her robe and arranged them in a perfect circle around the cloak, then took the piece of clothing and spread it across the floor, inside the circle. She then gestured for Hongjoong to step inside and kneel in the centre, right over the cloak. “Please don’t tell me I’ve lost my mind,” he said.</p><p class="p2">“No. I’m glad you haven’t.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong sighed, then closed his eyes, summoning his astral body as he would while meditating. The portal inside the cloak’s lining illuminated in natural colours mingled together, then gradually dividing and taking the shape of a ground and sky. In the next second he found himself on a field of grass of a vibrant green with a large and simplistically designed building in the distance. A group of boys cheered and laughed in close proximity to him, running in the same direction, following a boy who seemed to be vigorously kicking a black and white ball. They all wore blue and the boys from the other side of the field wore red. Hongjoong looked around him calmly, remaining still when the ball flew right through his chest. The boys were small and thin, no younger then ten years old, dark haired and lightly tanned from all the hours spent running and playing in the sun.</p><p class="p2">Underneath the shade of an awning was another boy dressed in blue with a cast filled with colourful drawings around his arm. He was cheering for the kids who seemed to be on the same team as him, balancing his legs in the air. Hongjoong broke into a nostalgic smile. The little Seonghwa from this world looked slightly different, with both eyes dark like forest land, hair freshly trimmed by how sharp the tips looked, and shoulders a bit more relaxed than how Hongjoong remembered him. It was strange to see him without a bow beside him in an open place like that. Although he smiled, there was still a tinge of unhappiness on his face while he watched his friends play. “Seonghwa,” Hongjoong whispered, reaching to touch his hair, but the younger stood up to fetch his water bottle. He sat himself a little farther away from where he sat before, but Hongjoong didn’t chase after him. He repainted the fading memory of Seonghwa’s younger face in his mind, faithfully colouring his cheeks and eyes.</p><p class="p2">Seonghwa took a short sip of his water, then wiped the corner of his mouth. He fell completely silent, seeming to only stare into the distance rather than watching the game. Until his chin twitched upwards, flicking his eyes over to Hongjoong and looking him directly in the eyes.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong snapped his eyes open, standing up and stepping away from the cloak. Comfort finally settled in his heart when he realised that the place Seonghwa was in could only be Tellus </p><p class="p2">“He looked at you,” Inoe said.</p><p class="p2">“He did,” Hongjoong exhaled. “Heavens, how could have years have gone by in just several moons?” He asked himself, then met eyes with his sister. “The wish. The last one, where is it?”</p><p class="p2">Inoe smiled, then opened her palm as the stars lifted from the floor and back around her shoulders. Then she took the cloak and placed it back exactly the way they found it. “Will you grant it?”</p><p class="p2">“I would, had he expressed it in the form of a wish. I will keep it with his future messages and hopefully they can be of use. There’s nothing I can do now."</p><p class="p2">Inoe nodded. She fell into deep thought as they traversed the corridors back to the office. Then she remained silent and only smiled softly.</p><p class="p2">“What are you thinking about?”</p><p class="p2">“How different you were aeons ago. Sometimes you would steal the air from the lesser gods’ lungs at the slightest offence. Other times you lived a long life.”</p><p class="p2">“I vaguely remember this, but I know there has been an instance where a bow pierced my lungs. I don’t know if I died then, but I remember Seonghwa weeping and seeking forgiveness. But that person wasn’t me. And the other wasn’t Seonghwa. I would find his soul even in Tartarus, no matter how broken. I’ve always found his soul. In my lover or enemy.”</p><p class="p2">“Indeed. Right now this soul seems to be at peace in this body.”</p><p class="p2">“But this peacefulness came with a sort of frailty I can’t seem to govern.”</p><p class="p2">“What do you mean?”</p><p class="p2">“I,” Hongjoong picked up a new glass quill, slowly turning and twirling it against the starlight on the ceiling, following the rainbows shifting and bending along with the movement. “I’m aware of all the things I am capable of, but I can never do them. This body has such a frail build, I’m afraid I will break it. Even this— <em>I’m afraid</em>. I say this very often in this life. <em>I’m afraid</em>. When I shouldn’t be.”</p><p class="p2">“You may be small, but a soul with the primordial essence would never build a body which could not handle its powers. You are giving this body a voice, when it should not be able to dictate you things.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong looked up at the sky where he remembered the fissure once was while his sister spoke. Her voice sounded like what the truth itself would if it had another sound other than its own.</p><p class="p2">They worked until the moon was glowing seamlessly. Hongjoong sat by the window with Seonghwa’s ‘wishes’ in front of him, smiling like a foolish lover. ‘I wish we could both get what we wanted’ Seonghwa’s voice soared through his mind. ‘I wish the same’ his own voice came next.</p><p class="p2">He turned around, looking at the moon. “What we wanted,” he whispered again and again as if the answer to the riddle was right in the question. He brought his palm above the paper as a light appeared from underneath the written words, lifting them in the air, altering and bending them until they became indecipherable forms of light floating above his hand. He blew them away softly towards the sky until they settled into a little space just south of the moon. It was a star that flickered brighter than the others, hidden just enough for the common eye to miss. He smiled. “Don’t you ever scare me like this again.”</p><p class="p2">And the pages that were now empty were folded into spinning flowers. One by one he released them out the window, staring into space as they glowed into yellow spirals.</p><p class="p2">But before the flowers reached the ground, they rose again up to his window, floating like lost souls, and when Hongjoong tried to touch them, they would drift away just outside of his reach.</p><p class="p2">With a mind too awake to put to sleep, he took his cloak and jumped out from his bedroom window, following the spinning papers into a corner of the cypress forest that belonged to Seonghwa’s family. There the trees were far denser with eerily shaped leaves meant to conceal the truth that lied behind it from a stranger’s eye.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong caught one of the spinning paper flowers into his fist, rougher than he wanted, surprised at the frailness of it when he saw it crumbling like a dry leaf and pouring out of his palm like sun dust. It was just that strange for him to display strength. There was one more left, swinging in the air from left to right, but Hongjoong failed to follow it further. “You can come out now. I know you’re here.” He flicked the flower away with his fingers, remaining still as it crumbled to dust and drifted away with the wind.</p><p class="p2">Out of the shadows, five men dressed in sleek, dark clothing came forward, with matching brooches of a stag holding an arrow in its mouth inside a crescent moon. The tallest of them wore an adorned sash, his left eye was blue and his right one was dark. “You’re so easy to corner, it’s almost frightening.”</p><p class="p2">“I know. People love luring me to dark places,” he broke off, looking at the other young men loading their arrows. “If I can be honest, I didn’t think it would be you. I thought you were my Father’s familiars. But they’ve never been this armed before.”</p><p class="p2">“Their intentions must have been purer, then.”</p><p class="p2">“And I assume yours are nothing of the sort.”</p><p class="p2">“I would have loved for them to be, but unfortunately I’m unable to wait any longer. All these months you went quiet, you closed the palace gates and you damaged the celestial sphere. With nobody to ever question your actions or hold you accountable. Mother may have forgiven you, but I am not like her.”</p><p class="p2">“No one has forgiven me. Not even I.” Hongjoong rubbed the last grains of dust between his fingers, then looked up at the moon rays. “But these months have taught me how some things are simply meant to happen.”</p><p class="p2">“But not this. The Parcae have decreed the course of his life eighteen years ago. This was never meant to happen.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong watched him with pity, uncertain how to tell him that the goddesses of fate had no power over Seonghwa’s venturesome soul. While these Parcae told his prophetic destiny, Seonghwa could have cut the thread as he transitioned between lives. He was ephemeral and smooth like strings of water, transparent in the eyes of fate, and never allowing anyone else to decree his life. Or if they did, he was no mortal to listen. “He left because he needed peace of mind, but he will return. He’s in a good place that treats him well. If I am alive, then he is alive. If I’m well and breathing, then so is he. I can’t give you a clearer answer than this.”</p><p class="p2">“You’ve always been a lover of mysteries and a keeper of secrets. Let the gods of death curse me and slice my tongue, but I am not leaving until you tell me the truth. All these months with no justice brought upon him only out of people trusting you blindly. Healing the skies after what you’ve done to them will not erase your mistakes.”</p><p class="p2">“Nor do I expect it to, but I know Seonghwa would not forgive me if I hurt the world for his sake. In this life, I’ve wanted nothing more than to love him as peacefully as I could never before. I would choose myself in the face of punishment instead of him. I could not hurt him. Even if the god of death possessed me into harming him.”</p><p class="p2">Inside Geon’s eyes there was a conflict more evident than a landscape of war. His blue eye was tinged with denial, bewilderment that a person he allowed in his brother’s life would commit such an act. In all of the instances there was Seonghwa hitting him playfully, pushing him into lakes and playing with him as roughly as a child could, apologising later on. He would crush bugs and roaches when they were too close whereas Hongjoong would set them free even after biting him. But beyond this denial was a sense of justice that roamed through his heart as wildly as rage. Hongjoong has seen this many times in Seonghwa’s eyes when the lack of knowledge upon things frustrated him, identical to the one in his brother’s eyes. </p><p class="p2">Seonghwa’s brother nodded, then lowered his head. Hongjoong exhaled alleviated, wanting to smile and to reassure the other, but stopped himself when he man lifted his right hand. The guards that stood behind him summoned arrows that gleamed like silver, loading them and aiming towards the sky. “What you said. I cannot take that for an answer.” He lowered his hand suddenly as a signal for the men to release their arrows, shooting them in a luminous arch like a comet toward the south of the moon where a star sat. One brighter than the other, crafted from thoughts and unspoken messages. Arrow after arrow pierced through the star, shattering it like glass, light fading from its core to its extremities until it became nothing but a circle of dimming light.</p><p class="p2">“Why,” Hongjoong whispered, eyes facing the shedding light. His heart was beating as tragically as a mortal’s, palms opened, welcoming the last grains of stardust.</p><p class="p2">“Because I don’t see why you, a light bringer, would mingle with the night sky. I saw how you sang to the moon to earn her pity, healing her wounds after you killed her god. But she spoke to me every time the sun would set, crying her hours away at my temple until I could not hear it anymore…If not for me, then for her: What happened to my brother?”</p><p class="p2">“I left that star in the sky for him to see and find his way home, but you stole it from him. And you still believe I owe you something.”</p><p class="p2">Geon laughed, more impressed at the sudden change in Hongjoong’s tone than the words he uttered. As threatening as a lion cub releasing its first roar. He walked up to him until he was as close as only Seonghwa was allowed to stand next to him. Out of loyalty, Hongjoong grew the distance between them, but a large hand wrapped around his throat, preventing him from moving. It wasn’t Geon’s hand as they were both resting at his sides, but a mound of shadows and darker matter with the texture of human skin and as cold as a real hand would feel. “There is nothing else I can do, then.”</p><p class="p2">He took him further into the depths of the forest which started to parallel a corridor to the underworld. It lacked in vegetation and scent, and the ground beneath them felt nothing like grass and soil, and it seemed to fall into a slight slope.</p><p class="p2">The hand pulled him back when he was to take his next step, only then noticing the soft light rising from what seemed to be a pit. “I’m sure you know what this is.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong let the silence consume the prince’s voice, leaving his question unanswered. What lied ahead of them was something called The Pool of Moneta, named after the goddess of memory. It was used to punish those who committed treason against Seonghwa’s family or refused to admit to their crimes. Geographically it was a pit, but its name was changed after the multitude of sounds, thoughts and human voices trapped inside the white pit, which the more one sunk, the more it suffocated them. The pool could either alter, erase or enhance one’s memory, and it was all according to how they fell. If the fall was smooth, they would gain omniscience, but if one hit their heads against cliffs or rock spikes, then their memory would be completely erased.</p><p class="p2">There have never been instances where gods were thrown in, or people jumping off by their own volition, as it was very much like an execution place. For Seonghwa’s lineage, the greatest punishment was having their knowledge stolen. But to Hongjoong, this meant nothing. His memories and knowledge were a separate being from him, always following him like a loyal pet. “This won’t kill me, unfortunately.”</p><p class="p2">“I don’t want to kill you,” Geon said “I want to kill your memory of him.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong relaxed his body, staring into the pit’s flickering light. “Alright then,” he smiled, tapping the stygian hand that held his throat with his ring finger, watching as a blue light enveloped it and burned it back to brightness. Geon staggered back, groaning at the sudden pain in his back. </p><p class="p2">Hongjoong sighed. But this sigh grew into a violent gust that blew everyone within his circle away from him, the arrows inside the guards’ quivers flying long into the distance and the cypress’ leaves shot down like spears. Hongjoong looked at the sky and smiled in gratitude towards the <em>Venti</em>, the wind deities governed by Inoe.</p><p class="p2">A crown of bright lights formed above his head, widening like skies at sunrise. His eyes and skin glowed yellow as did the blazing summer sun, burning the eyes of whoever unsheltered them. “Is it anger you want from me? You want me to harm you so that you may run home and cry to your Mother?” His voice echoed through the sylvan landscape like the night’s Furies, grass trembling at his feet. “I’m the wrong person to ask this of.”</p><p class="p2">The ethereal element was invisible to the forces of arrows and blades that so fierily traversed him only to fall inside the pit. His physical body dissolved into the clouds that covered the eyes of Seonghwa’s moon from the violent landscape that unfolded over the woodlands. But parts of his mind and strength were still below, turning the arrowheads into dazzling mirrors, and the shadowy creatures that Geon and his men summoned became light. He has never drawn bruise or ichor out of anyone in his present life, and although it was a strange thing to take pride in, he wanted to live this life as serenely. His heart roared in his chest, pumping with the blood and spirit of his former belligerent self, sights of battles and populations drowning into the sea, bloody helmets toppling over against the forces of the wind. Now he was called a child, innocent when he wasn’t, and foolish when he knew more than everybody, but he embraced all of these words. When faced with violence, he could only dodge and tire his opponent.</p><p class="p2">Luminous specks decorated the starry sky like morning lights, and as the darkness bit through them, they depleted into daylight rays weaving through the night’s cloak until the sky halved into daylight and complete darkness. With one eye he saw morning, and midnight with the other. </p><p class="p2">Geon panted, his hair and clothes dishevelled and his eyes nebulous with no trace of blue left. He wielded the night with dexterous moves like a sky god reshaped rain, vanishing and reappearing before Hongjoong’s lights reached him. Scorched grass and splinters of bows and arrows were scattered across their circle, awaking the oreads. In ethereal body Hongjoong charged towards him in the form of luminescences, wrapping around Geon’s throat. As he was forced down, Hongjoong regained his corporeal form, light rays redrawing him like sunbursts outlined landscapes. Although he straddled and pinned him to the ground, Geon felt no weight pressing him down. Hongjoong’s skin was still translucent as lights settled in, like fireflies as seen through glass. “Nothing will instigate me to ever hurt anyone, so I’d rather we stopped this now. I cannot shield the moon forever for you. Think of Seonghwa. Think of how he would feel.”</p><p class="p2">“I am. I have been. The moon and these thoughts are all we have, and these are sadly not enough to wipe the moon’s tears. Not when you speak his name with so much guilt. And here I thought that was only a role you played.”</p><p class="p2">“For someone who knows so little, you bear so much hatred for me. If times were better I would tell you how many of my days I’ve given to Seonghwa so that he may live longer than I. But the day when you’ll understand things will arrive, look through the starts and maybe you’ll find an empty one to carry your wish.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong smiled, lifting one hand to cover Geon’s forehead and caress healings into his skin, but as soon as he did, a voice of chthonic origin resounded from behind his shoulders. “Hongjoong,”</p><p class="p2">Gasping, he unwrapped his hands from Geon’s throat although he held him gently, rising to his feet and searching for the voice. At first it was just his father stepping out from behind the night’s veil, but then little after followed Yeosang with the most distressed look on his face that Hongjoong’s ever seen. He lifted his hands wanting to rush towards him, but the King lifted his black sceptre to his chest, preventing him. “We’ve talked storms before, but this is the most cataclysmic you’ve ever gotten.” He said calmly, swiping his sceptre across the sky as darkness laid itself down smoothly, devouring the strings of morning like ink shrouding water.</p><p class="p2">“I’m sorry. I’ve failed to exercise control again.”</p><p class="p2">“…I can tell.” He looked at his disarrayed hair and clothes, then at the marks on Geon’s throat. “Though I don’t want to listen, I feel as though I should.”</p><p class="p2">Geon drew a breath to answer, but Hongjoong spoke quicker. “I allowed grief to consume me again. And I reacted violently when I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. He did nothing wrong. He was only worried about Seonghwa.”</p><p class="p2">“That’s not true,” Yeosang said, his eyes translucent, recalling the events of the past. “You would never react this rashly.”</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong clenched his teeth. “It is true. What happened here and in the sky was all my doing. So Father, let him go. I’ll take any punishment.”</p><p class="p2">“I’ll leave that to you,” his Father said, flicking the end of his sceptre over the loose button from Hongjoong’s shirt, watching it pitifully as it fell and rolled through the grass.</p><p class="p2">“I’m not sure I know what you mean,”</p><p class="p2">“Punish yourself is what I mean.”</p><p class="p2">Holding his breath, Hongjoong looked at Geon without hesitance. “You said the erasure of my memory would wipe the moon’s tears?”</p><p class="p2">And Geon watched him speechless, even though his eyes were surfaced with pity. Hongjoong held his arm above him like he wanted to protect him, still and stubborn and with such an atingle look in his eyes like that was the moment he was waiting for. The opportune moment to nosedive into the memory pool and perish and finally meet Chaos again. There was no fear of risk in his eyes.</p><p class="p2">Hongjoong looked back at the pit, gulping subtly, hoping it wasn’t as rough as he remembered it. “It appears this would make a lot of people feel at ease. So I will do it. I wouldn’t want to be the reason why Seonghwa’s moon cries.”</p><p class="p2">“Let me help you, then,” the King said, lifting his sceptre to Hongjoong’s chest, summoning the night winds, lifting his feet off the softness of the grass, whipping his body away as effortlessly as a leaf, slamming his back into the rocky cliffs of the pit.</p><p class="p2">A low whistle came from its depths like that of a wind seeping through fissures, cadenced like recited poems. Out of sheer and foolish instinct, Hongjoong grabbed onto the edge of the cliff, digging his nails into the thin layer of soil coating it. Freezing winds rose from beneath him, latching onto him and numbing him from feet upwards.</p><p class="p2">He released all the air he collected in his lungs and permitted his fingers to slip. He rolled his head back, closing his eyes, giving himself away to the cold that bellowed at the back of his ear like an ocean storm. Until a hand with a powerful grip wrapped around his wrist. “Let me go,”</p><p class="p2">“No,” Yeosang said, eyes filled with raw emotion his heart wasn’t built for. “I can’t.”</p><p class="p2">“It’s fine. I promise. I chose this.”</p><p class="p2">“You shouldn’t have.”</p><p class="p2">“…Do you trust me?”</p><p class="p2">Yeosang shook his head. “Not like this.”</p><p class="p2">“Then you should. When did I ever not know what I’m doing? I’ll be back, don’t worry. I’ve been here before.”</p><p class="p2">“I don’t care, I’m not letting you go. This won’t make anyone happy.”</p><p class="p2">“Maybe not,” Hongjoong opened his palm so he’d slip out of his grip easily, but Yeosang only held him tighter. “But the Universe will shift as much as needed when a god makes a wish on another, right?”</p><p class="p2">Yeosang clenched his jaw, pressing his eyes closed. Hongjoong knew what he was thinking, and he too hurt with him.</p><p class="p2">“Let me go. I made this mistake, and I have to pay for it so the world won’t have to. Please trust me. I will be back…Hopefully we both will.”</p><p class="p2">The cold bit at Yeosang’s nose and cheeks, hoarfrost already gathering on his knuckles. He swallowed the first tinges of emotion he has ever felt since his creation, and one by one he released his fingers. One hand, then the other. It took less than a breath for the winds to devour Hongjoong, pulling him through a sea of clouds. In the blink of an eye it was as if he never held him. He stared into the white waves of the pool, undulating like sea crests.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. A Chord For Songful Minds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">It was a place that lied inside the abysses between two galaxies, mute of all elements and darknesses. The air was light and sweet-scented like nectar, but sharp as to cut through the clouds. Underneath his feet was a bridge with no warmth or texture and across it was a broken tiled floor teeming with debris and fragments of pillars. Above him was a dust cloud of a warm colour, the corner of a nebula he could not recognise from where he stood.</p><p class="p1">In advance of him there was something vague that seemed to distance from him the more he approached it. He thought nothing of it at first, much too immersed in the landscape. The view from beyond the ceiling and walls was never the same, and his feet did not seem to feel sore regardless of how much he walked. He crossed more bridges and forked paths than he could remember, walking for what seemed like hours in some galaxies, and years in others.</p><p class="p1">In the centre of a forked path was a white waterfall with springs of elysian heights that upon touch it felt like layers of veils and silk. Hongjoong held his breath and traversed it, shielding his eyes with his palm.</p><p class="p1">Beyond the waterfall stood an entity with alabaster skin and a head as large as the moon. Its shoulders spread as wide as horizons and seas, its face was pastures and plains, its cheeks dashed with deserts, its nose and brow bones were hills and mountains, and forests and cities rested on its eyelashes. It wore Uranus’ heavens like a crown, with light clouds and clear skies. Hongjoong parted his lips in surprise, approaching the entity with small steps. “Chaos,” he smiled.</p><p class="p1">Chaos expressed very little on their countenance, but it was through their connection with Hongjoong that they could make themselves understood affectively. “Welcome back,”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, no. I’m not dead.”</p><p class="p1">“…Not dead?”</p><p class="p1">“No. Things happened. I didn’t die. Well. Not in the real sense,” Hongjoong advanced towards Chaos’ space. “Nothing much has changed here since last time. How long has it been?”</p><p class="p1">“About seventy years.” Chaos slowly turned their head to face Hongjoong, and something tingled inside the prince’s heart, like a sliver of feeling coming from the god. He smiled when he felt Chaos smiling. “You look small.”</p><p class="p1">“Compared to you, I’ve always been. Can I come closer?”</p><p class="p1">A sound like that of the beginning of a rockslide came from Chaos’ direction. Hongjoong took it as a sign of approval and approached them carefully and the more he did, he noticed how the floor gained a more transparent appearance underneath the layer of rubble and ice. Hongjoong swept it away with his foot, mildly surprised to see something that resembled the lines and creases like those inside a palm. He followed the river-long lines up to their source, realising those were Chaos’ hands cupping the essence of the world. “Thank you for bringing me here. I thought I would have to travel between realms again.”</p><p class="p1">From his peripheral Hongjoong saw a thick cloud of mist gliding towards him. Without thinking he sat himself inside it, eyes bore into Chaos’ face as the cloud flew him closer to their eyes. “What has struck both of you to misbehave like this?”</p><p class="p1">“…It’s his fault. And I love him too much to say no.”</p><p class="p1">“If one is to blame, then so is the other. Neither of you would search for me if it was nothing. So tell me how can I help you, godling?”</p><p class="p1">“I assume you’re in no need of introductions to the story-”</p><p class="p1">“I am not.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong cleared his throat. He remembered Chaos as something of a distant relative, the second god to ever visit him when he died, after Aether, but it was always a coin flip between whether they liked being spoken to cordially or not. “So then…I’ve come to ask you if you know what my wish was.”</p><p class="p1">“Your wish?”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong nodded. “It was a harmless wish. It was vague enough not to allow the Universe to alter too much. Um,” Hongjoong scratched the back of his head, already tired from all the days and lives and moments he had to recall. It was then when he realised that it was all a blur in his mind, but most of his mnemonic scape remained intact. “…To both get what we want. I think that was the wish.”</p><p class="p1">“And what do you want?”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know. This is why I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what I want. I know what Seonghwa wants. Or rather, <em>wanted</em>.”</p><p class="p1">“Think.”</p><p class="p1">When Hongjoong lifted his hand from his head, a strand of hair caught against his nail. It was of a soft, rosy colour and blue around the end. It reminded him of how Seonghwa loved pointing out the slight changes in hues and shades, how worried he was if the pink was too vibrant or the blue was too dark. It was a characteristic of Hongjoong’s that he’s never possessed before, but it was too burdensome to look into, always having to keep a mirror with him just to tell the time of year. “Seonghwa,” he whispered, hearing Chaos’ breath through the forest winds and sea breezes. “I wanted him to find what he was looking for.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“I was hoping this is where he wound find answers. Is there any way I can know about his time of return?”</p><p class="p1">“A riddle.”</p><p class="p1">“Riddle?”</p><p class="p1">“Solve a riddle. Seonghwa refused to solve it. So you have to. If you solve it, Seonghwa will return.”</p><p class="p1">“Ah. Passing the hard work onto me. Thought we were over that two lives ago. Alright. I’ll try.”</p><p class="p1">Leaves rustled and soft waves washed the shores— Chaos chuckled. Hongjoong took his shoes and cloak off, making himself comfortable on the cloud. He looked at the heavens above Chaos’ head while waiting for them to speak. “Once upon a time there were three maidens who were cursed by a witch. They were to transform into flowers during the day and regain their human forms during the night. One night one of them told her lover ‘The only way to break this curse is to come to the field in the morning and pick me, but you must guess correctly.’ Then her lover agreed and told her that the next night she mustn’t visit him. The maiden did as she promised, and the next morning he came to the field where the three flowers were. He picks the correct one and saved the maiden. How did he know which one was his lover?”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong stared at Chaos speechlessly, lips parted. Feeling embarrassed at his own inability to perceive a long string of information, he asked Chaos to repeat the riddle, after which he memorised it. What he felt in his heart was something similar to regret.</p><p class="p1">He sighed and jumped off the cloud and onto the beach from Chaos’ shoulder, mumbling the riddle to himself. “Do you promise to tell me everything I want to know if I solve this?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“And are you certain that he will return?”</p><p class="p1">“I am.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong sighed and started his walk along the beach that seemed to stretch farther than the sky, with a sea so clear that even the slightest movement of the clouds reflected in it. He looked up at the sky, where he saw a sun darker than he knew it to be, with a golden eye in the centre with two hands and two feet emerging from it. “Can you hear me from there?”</p><p class="p1">“I can.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong picked a broken seashell and drew the contents of the riddle in the sand, far away so that the backwash won’t erase it. He drew the three maidens and beside it, the three flowers. “I assume the flowers are identical.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Does the witch make another appearance?”</p><p class="p1">“No. The witch doesn’t come back.”</p><p class="p1">“But she’s the one who cursed them.”</p><p class="p1">“…She doesn’t come back.”</p><p class="p1">“Is the type of flower relevant to the story?”</p><p class="p1">“No.”</p><p class="p1">“Then I don’t know.”</p><p class="p1">“Would you really disappoint Aether and Seonghwa like this?”</p><p class="p1">“…When you put it like that,” he sighed.</p><p class="p1">And so it went for many hours. Or days. Or some approximation of time passing in that secluded corner of the Universe. Hongjoong asking questions, fishing for leads and hints and sometimes straying from the riddle so much that he invented another story. He lied down among the seashells, his chest bare facing the sun and his arms spread, with his cloak shading his face. He was able to picture the story clearly in his mind, until a new realisation crashed into him. Seonghwa would not have left something unanswered unless there was more to it, or he purposely passed it onto Hongjoong because out of certainty that he was going to end up there as well.</p><p class="p1">With that in mind, he ripped the last glass button from his cloak and summoned the Venti. The northern and western winds flew around him in wide circles, creating a storm of droplets and sand around him. “Take this home and tell them not to worry,” he said, tossing the button into the air, then was left to rub all the water and sand out of his eyes when the winds left him.</p><p class="p1">Soon after, when he returned to his rummaging, dusk came and he fell asleep. After many hours when he pulled the cloak away from his face he found himself in a meadow filled with flowers of all kinds, dashed with snowy crystals and glowing brightly even under the shadows. They were all evenly coated like they were handcrafted and displayed in a gallery. “Hoarfrost,” Hongjoong gasped, then stood up and looked towards the sky. “Chaos! It’s hoarfrost, isn’t it? Or dew, even. If the maiden remained in her flower form during the night that means hoarfrost or dew gathered upon the petals. And since the other two maidens transformed, that means her lover could tell her apart.”</p><p class="p1">At first no answer returned. A moment passed, then another. Cold started creeping up his chest and back. When another moment passed he assumed that his answer was wrong. He lowered his head, disappointed, then he started his second walk along the silvery forest, until he heard the sound of trudging and galloping coming from the opposite direction. A scintillating horse-drawn chariot like that of Sol materialised from the light, ether and soil. Hongjoong stepped inside the chariot and grabbed the reins loosely in one hand, wrapping his cloak around him with the other. “I’m not sure what to make of this silence, Chaos.”</p><p class="p1">“I will tell you what you want to know.”</p><p class="p1">“And what <em>do</em> I want to know?”</p><p class="p1">“Your myth of creation, very likely.”</p><p class="p1">The words struck Hongjoong like the sensation of falling in a dream. It awakened something of a distant memory that settled inside his mind with a different voice. It was Chaos who spoke, but Hongjoong could only hear Seonghwa’s voice in his mind.</p><p class="p1">“Are you ready to remember?” Chaos was beside him, floating above his shoulder in the form of a ball of light with an eye in its centre. They flew above his void realm until all there was were only the black clouds that enveloped it, then even higher just until Hongjoong started seeing the celestial river so small to his right. </p><p class="p1">“I don’t know. But for him, I am.” His heart was beating lively in his chest with the fear of never having travelled that far away from home, grasping the reins tightly in his hands. Around him was darkness with subtle ribbons of colour and oceans of stars as close to him as the ceiling of a room. “Where is this?”</p><p class="p1">Chaos flew above him as gingerly as a butterfly about to land on a flower, then sat on the chariot’s leaning board. “It’s far away from home, isn’t it?”</p><p class="p1">“It is. I can’t see home from here.”</p><p class="p1">“Before there was home, there was someone to build it. At first, there was only the Darkness and the Night that came from <em>me, </em>there was Cupid— the desire for creation, and there was Tellus. Then the union of Darkness and Night created Aether, and from his quintessence of life— the air and the light, emerged another entity— not yet a god, but not a personification either.”</p><p class="p1">“Who was this entity?”</p><p class="p1">Chaos looked out in the distance, around where he knew Hongjoong’s world was, then he looked back at him. Hongjoong also met their eyes, for much longer than silence could take.</p><p class="p1">“Is it,” he thought, but he didn’t want to say it. “Me?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s both of you.”</p><p class="p1">“…Ah,” Hongjoong whispered, wondering why he was not more surprised. His mind knew something the rest of him didn’t.</p><p class="p1">“Yes. He wanted to preserve the truth of the world in a single soul that would live continuously through time, but then celestial wars, the Titanomachy happened, and this soul divided in two. One remained with Aether to gather knowledge of all that lied within the sky and above, and the other descended into Tellus, the inhabited world to document the creation of nature, society and art. Thought Aether and Tellus knew that the more lives you two lived, the more you would forget your true origins, so they commissioned goddess Moneta to build a pool like a vault of memories which you two would be immune to. The more you lived, the more the pool deepened. You were here before there was anything else. You know everything there is to know, except how to stay separated. You’re both very different from your previous life. You more than Seonghwa. Your wish before you started this life was to experience things you haven’t had the chance to before. So Aether and Tellus gave you to your Mothers and raised you as princes in a time with no conflict. Seonghwa wanted to continue living the life of a traveller as he did before, but it was at the price of losing you, so he chose to be by your side and be born at the same time as you.”</p><p class="p1">“So this must be payback, then,” inside his chest, he smiled. Running back and forth between lives, playing games and running through the playground they’ve made of the universal canvas of Chaos’ chest.</p><p class="p1">“Do you feel burdened?” Chaos asked.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know. I’ve gotten used to my memories mingling with each other. I know I’ve lived through many generations. I remember this one specifically. I don’t know what my name was, but I know I served at a temple. I was an oracle. I told people how things came into existence and they thought I was a deity of sorts. And now that temple I used to know so well is a ruin where Seonghwa and I used to play as children. I have very few things I remember this clearly."</p><p class="p1">"Very few things you don't run away from, rather."</p><p class="p1">"...You're not wrong there." Hongjoong smiled, then swept his eyes across the landscape. Nothing changed and nothing moved. There was no ground or divine air, just Chaos in their incipient form. “Thank you. For everything, I mean.”</p><p class="p1">“No need. Aether would have liked me to call you family.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong nodded with his hand against the mark on his chest. “How long has it been in the real world? Is it time to go back?”</p><p class="p1">“You want to return?”</p><p class="p1">“I’d like to be home when Seonghwa comes back. Or if not, just to have another look at Tellus through Father’s cloak.”</p><p class="p1">“A riddle, then.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the edge of the chariot. “A riddle it is.”</p><p class="p1">“I am a dark child sprung from a bright sire, a wingless bird, fleeting to heaven from earth. Each eye that meets me weeps, but not from grief, and in thin air I vanish at my birth.” Chaos looked at him calmly as they spoke, blinking slowly once. Inside their irises there was the Milky Way, the celestial river Hongjoong could see every night from his window.</p><p class="p1">“…Sprung from a bright sire,” Hongjoong repeated, whispering “Fleeting to heaven from earth…” he tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “Darkness that comes from light, vanishes at birth,” he scratched the back of his neck, thinking profoundly although he found it difficult to do so when none other than Chaos stared into the depths of his soul, expectant. “Smoke. Is it smoke?”</p><p class="p1">Chaos blinked. “You can go back home. But regardless of when, you cannot leave like this.”</p><p class="p1">“Like this how?”</p><p class="p1">“Alive.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong clutched his chest. Chaos’ eye blazed like the sun as they turned around to face him, then out from their palm sprang a long and sharp spike which they directed towards Hongjoong’s chest. “Will it be now?”</p><p class="p1">The prince, out of fear of impending death alone, stepped backwards and out of the chariot, falling into the void that was all Chaos, slowly like a feather, until a golden sword pierced his chest, driving him through the layers and veils of time and space and back into the blood-plated pits of the memory pool. There was a ravaging pain in his core though there was no wound or ichor, only torn fabric and a dire need to scream. The phantom-shaped memories that teemed the depths of the pit raised their limbs to claw at his skin and mind. He experienced the death of the body, mind sparking with thoughts and systems shutting down, but through the prism of living.</p><p class="p1">When the sound of the wailing voices became unbearable, he closed his eyes and gave himself away to the screams and foreign thoughts that swallowed him like water.</p><p class="p1">Then, beyond the translucency of his eyelids, he saw a large shadow that overtook everything else, then felt a tight grip that seized his wrist and pulled him upwards and into the tenderness of two arms and a body fell around him. </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2">.·:·.<span class="s1">☽✧</span> <span class="s2">✦</span> <span class="s2">✧</span><span class="s1">☾</span>.·:·.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">A dream played inside Hongjoong’s mind in the form of a ballad, one that he was never to hear the end of as it merged with sounds from over the shell of his ear— rustling fabric and doors opening and closing. His eyes snapped open with the unendurable phantom pain from his chest like his ribcage was splitting itself open. He awakened with a loud gasp and a fierce urge to take a mouthful of air, hands clutched over his chest.</p><p class="p1">“You scared the hell out of me,” a young man said. He sat at the desk by the bed with a glass quill in his hand. “Are you alright?”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong panted through parted lips, blinking the blur out of his eyes, staring at his chest. He wore nothing on his upper body and his skin was intact.</p><p class="p1">“Hongjoong,” the other smiled, sitting at the foot of the bed and touching Hongjoong’s ankle through the covers. He was handsome, with firm muscle lines on his arms and chest, his left eye was dark and earthy, and the other was blue. He wore a white chiton secured with a red cord around his hips.</p><p class="p1">When Hongjoong finally convinced his mind that he was unharmed, he lifted himself up and wrapped his arms around himself.</p><p class="p1">“Are you cold?” The young man asked and Hongjoong shook his head, but he brought a blanket to wrap around his shoulders nonetheless. “Never in a million years I thought I’d find you there. It’s still a miracle I did. I- I really thought I’d live the rest of his life without you.”</p><p class="p1">Tilting his head, Hongjoong watched the other pick up the shirt he once wore. There was a large hole just over the chest. “Do I know you?”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong was met with terrified eyes, so deluged in shock that they brightened in colour. “What?”</p><p class="p1">“I was asking who you are.”</p><p class="p1">“…You’re joking.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong shook his head slowly. The dark haired man dropped the shirt he was holding and grasped Hongjoong by the shoulders with trembling hands. “I got you out of there. I pulled you out before it would alter your memories. You couldn’t have forgotten.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes, you do! You have to! We talked about this before, and we both agreed!”</p><p class="p1">“I- I see. I just wanted to know who you are, I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong looked at him blankly as the hands that held him dropped fluidly down to his sides. The young man’s eyes were shaking gently, slowly filling with tears. He dropped to his knees by the bed, taking Hongjoong’s hand in between his. They were larger and colder than his, almost engulfing his hand. Hongjoong watched him cry silently, his free hand itching to caress his hair and soothe him with words he didn’t know, but it became more difficult for him to subdue his urge to laugh. “Oh, gods, I can’t believe I made you cry.”</p><p class="p1">Covering his eyes with his hand, he burst out laughing, unconsciously grabbed Seonghwa’s fingers with the other hand in case he wanted to run away. “I was trying so hard not to laugh, I’m sorry!”</p><p class="p1">“You,” Seonghwa scoffed, withdrawing his hand and springing up to his feet, aggressively wiping his tears his clenched fists. “You’re evil! Do you have any idea how terrified I was?!”</p><p class="p1">“<em>You</em>?” Hongjoong reacted on impulse, not having expected for the conversation to take such a turn. “You were terrified? This was payback for everything I had to go through while you were gone! In fact, this is nothing compared to that. It was a joke, you can’t get mad at me.” It was true, but he felt guilty still to watch his beloved cry in frustration and him not being the one to wipe his tears. He sighed. “Alright, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d cry.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa wiped his tears again, then took a deep breath. “So you’re fine.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Do you remember everything?”</p><p class="p1">“I believe so. Do <em>you</em> remember everything?”</p><p class="p1">“…I believe so.”</p><p class="p1">It was an otherworldly experience for them to look at each other again. They could each swear that they looked older. Seonghwa’s shoulders seemed a bit wider than before, and Hongjoong’s jawline was sharper. Judging by the way Seonghwa’s toes curled and his fists quivered, Hongjoong knew he wanted to leave the room and cool down on his own like he always did. Run into the forest and shoot some arrows. But instead he climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arms tightly around Hongjoong, clinging to him desperately. “I hate you,” he sobbed softly, then laid a gentle kiss on his shoulder.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t think you do,” Hongjoong sighed, returning the favour by kissing his temple. “Welcome back.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s good to be back. Oh, Aeternitas, I have so much to tell you.”</p><p class="p1">“I do too. It’s like I lived another life in just a few months.”</p><p class="p1">“Months? It’s that how much it’s been?”</p><p class="p1">“…I don’t know. I haven’t fully grasped the discrepancy between the passage of time here, on Chaos’ realm, and in Tellus.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa grabbed his shoulders, holding him still while studying his face. He was paler than usual and the colour of his eyes was slightly diluted as it always was after he woke up after a long sleep. If he didn’t miss him as much as he did, he would have hoisted him up and threw him into the river as a form of revenge for making him show vulnerability. But instead be brought him into his arms again, embracing him until his spine cracked. “We’re never doing this again.”</p><p class="p1">Barely breathing, Hongjoong hugged him back. He’s had to endure worse things from him. All of which were within his frame of tolerance. “I know there's very few things that make you this vulnerable. What happened?”</p><p class="p1">After a silent moment, Seonghwa released him and stood up from the bed. Out of a large drawer, he took another chiton which he crumped up into a ball and tossed it into Hongjoong’s face. “Get dressed.”</p><p class="p1">But Hongjoong caught the chiton in his hands before the impact would send him into another deep sleep. As seeing Hongjoong bare skinned in this life could have presented a threat to his chastity, Seonghwa turned around to let him change in peace.</p><p class="p1">“Where are we?” Hongjoong asked, finally looking around the room. The lack of verdancy, amber ornaments and luxurious decorations told him they were nowhere near either of the palaces.</p><p class="p1">“It’s where we sometimes rest when we go hunting until too late. I don’t think I’ve ever taken you here.”</p><p class="p1">“Are we alone?”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa took his hand, locking their fingers, then guided him out of the little shed. He offered no reply at first, only walking beside Hongjoong along the petal-shedding trees. “I’m surprised too,” he said quietly. </p><p class="p1">Unsure what to make of Seonghwa’s silence, Hongjoong reached for the locks of hair that covered his partner's face, tucking them behind his ear, then swept back his fringe that covered the mark on his forehead. “I’m listening, you know. I know you’re upset about something.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m tired. You know how you always spoke of how fragile your body is. I’m starting to feel it too. Tellus took its toll on my soul. And my bones feel rusty still after Chaos killed me to send me back here.” He released Hongjoong and lied down on the grass with his back propped against a fallen tree log underneath which blue flowers grew. “I must have frightened Diana with the sudden death, as it wasn’t fated to happen then. It was a little too late when she found me, so Chaos must have picked me up before my soul was mistaken for a dead one and sent to the underworld. They gave me this riddle which took me too long to solve. Then they sent me to Tellus. Now that I think about it I think they meant that as a punishment. They called me impudent for speaking so rashly, then they said ‘Blast your wish. You will only return when the riddle will be solved’. I knew you were going to seek answers from Chaos too, so I didn’t mind.”</p><p class="p1">“How long have you been in Tellus?”</p><p class="p1">“I don't know. A significant number of years, I think. More than enough. Tellus is beautiful, but mortal life is so bland. I read everything they wrote about us, then I wrote some books myself. You know, based on facts only. And then, before I knew it, I was back here. For all I know I simply vanished from there in my sleep, then suddenly Chaos tosses me back here. I was so lucky to have found you.”</p><p class="p1">“It was all premeditated. Nothing Chaos does is accidental. All the more now that I know you’ve angered them. Although, I didn’t think it would be to the point where they would not listen to your wish.”</p><p class="p1">Reminded of him shameful trial, Seonghwa leaned his head on Hongjoong’s lap, sinking his face into the skirt of his chiton. He gathered the fabric into his fists and pressed it into his eyes even before tears would intend to fall. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but keep your eyes open. I know you love being here. Let me look at you?”</p><p class="p1">Even if in Seonghwa’s eyes this was a failure, Hongjoong was reminded of Chaos’ words. How the two were one entity later divided in two created with the sole purpose of carrying and sharing truth, like muses of godly lore transmigrating through time and from world to world. He couldn’t hear Seonghwa crying yet, so he allowed him to comfortably sulk on his lap as he walked his fingers through his dark hair, longer and less soft, and his skin was lighter than its usual gleaming bronze. In tellurian time years must have gone by, probably no less than three. In that silence, Hongjoong promised himself to keep Seonghwa in the sun like a flower to regain his usual sun-kissed glow. “You’re alright now.”</p><p class="p1">As soon as he registered the words, Seonghwa lifted his head. There were thin lines underneath his eyes like those of sleeplessness, and he was squinting when he looked at Hongjoong, having grown less accommodated to his customary radiancy. “I don’t think I am. I was so close. I found out so much. The answer to so many questions that have been posed to me that I was soo unknowledgeable to respond to at the time. I’ve learned more about the creation of humanity and mortals than I know about,” almost out of breath, he sighed out his last words. “That one thing I left for. I started all of this, and…I was so close.” Seonghwa mumbled, rubbing the nape of his neck in shame that, too centred on his own goal, he couldn’t even remember his beloved’s wish. </p><p class="p1">But no slight blush across his nose would ever escape Hongjoong. In his bright eyes, nothing could hide behind shadows. “It’s me, Seonghwa,” Hongjoong confessed, much too suddenly and with no introductions. In those moments that passed, he asked himself if he was going to regret. “I’m your origin. And you are mine.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa chuckled softly, picking a flower and placing it at Hongjoong’s ear. “How romantic of you.”</p><p class="p1">“No, I,” Hongjoong paused, reluctant to share the information as if he was about to confess to an offence he committed. “I wasn’t being romantic. This is the truth you wanted from Chaos.”</p><p class="p1">“Why do you know this? This wasn’t your wish, was it?”</p><p class="p1">“…My wish was to see you at peace with who you are.” He took the flower from his ear and placed it at Seonghwa’s instead. “We came from Aether and Tellus’ desire for knowledge, but we were not created to be gods. We were an incorporeal entity, then we were split in two— one for the sky, the other for the Earth.” He said with a tinge of regret. “That’s all I know.”</p><p class="p1">Stars sparkled out of Seonghwa’s eyes when he blinked. It was the moon eclipsing the sun, yes she shone brighter than ever. “Really?”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong nodded once. He would have nodded more, he would have smiled and embraced him with how smitten he was of joyful Seonghwa. He only hoped he did a better job at concealing his feelings. “Really.”</p><p class="p1">“The two of us.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“But how could we forget?”</p><p class="p1">“I wanted to. Saved me some migraines. I don’t know about you. Must have been because you followed me. Or So Chaos said. This is why I had no wish for myself at all. I’ve always wanted small things, and I’ve accomplished all of them. I do the things I can and want. I’ve made no enemies. I have you. This is the life I wanted. The life in the upper sky. But you, <em>godling</em>. You’re different.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa embraced him gently, kissing his cheek and his temple before resting his chin on his shoulders. The silence they lapsed into reminded him of the long gone times when they struggled to find time alone. “I’m sorry I put you through this.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s alright. I’m not upset. Just get ready to not see me as much for the next days with all the headaches that await me.”</p><p class="p1">“What makes you think I will ever leave you. We have all of this for ourselves.”</p><p class="p1">At that, Hongjoong opened his eyes and looked at the cloudy sky. Understanding what the clouds read in their layers, held in a sigh and closed them back.</p><p class="p1">When they returned to the house he had a few moments to himself until Seonghwa returned. He looked around the little modest room, the writing station where Seonghwa immortalised his tellurian memories until they would vanish completely, and beside it was a short stack of parchment papers which Hongjoong didn’t need to pick up to know it was the script of their play. He smiled almost unconsciously as he flipped through the pages, reading the annotations Seonghwa wrote for his character. The main hero’s soul brother and archenemy. “It’s soon, you know.” Seonghwa said, leaning his arm against the doorway.</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong’s stomach twisted like it did when he fell from Chaos’ realm. “Right.”</p><p class="p1">“We should change parts.”</p><p class="p1">Knowing full well why he said that, Hongjoong smiled. It was usually him who showed most excitement about the play. In that moment that excitement was still there, almost too fearful to surface. “I’ll step out of it this year.” He said, with all the simulated selfishness he could muster in that moment. “Things won’t be quiet. I need time to redeem myself. You don’t know what this world was like when you were gone.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa knew it would come to that, and even if Hongjoong’s decision didn’t bother him, he still wished he was more clear about his feelings. He wanted Hongjoong to blame him, to raise his voice and called him a fool. “I don’t think you’ve done enough for anybody to wish you harm.”</p><p class="p1">“Perhaps not, but I can’t tell. People will never wish us things they don’t have. If they have pain, they will wish others pain. And if so, then I wish them to heal.”</p><p class="p1">The colour in Hongjoong’s eyes wavered like the uneven surface of water. Seonghwa had a vague memory of what that meant, but it was mostly his instinct which told him that it might not have been a good sign. “When you say things like these I think about how much I don’t deserve you.”</p><p class="p1">Smiling, Hongjoong wanted to respond in a casual, slightly amused way like he always did when Seonghwa’s solemn but romantic words struck him so suddenly and sent him into a blushing frenzy. ‘People could only dream of being loved by Seonghwa as much as you are’ he recalled Yeosang saying like it was yesterday. It was something that’s never occurred to him. The Universe made him understand that they were important to the godly lore so they’d fulfil their duties, but not enough for it to be envious of their love for each other to keep them separated. “It’s a hundred thousand lives too late to say that.”</p><p class="p1">Only that it wasn’t. Seonghwa’s most precious treasure were his endless memories stored safely in his mind to the smallest detail. Most of them were about Hongjoong and his many other forms and bodies. There has never been a time when Seonghwa didn’t look at him like he was the sky itself. Hongjoong’s always had this allure to him that always kept Seonghwa wondering and attracted. A form of intelligence that he felt guilty to reveal in favour of appearing modest and small. A lack of curiosity about the truth of the world precisely because he knew it all, but he smothered his memory in so much dark and mystery that he appeared unknowing. “I’ve never deserved you. But somehow I’m still here.”</p><p class="p1">The colour in Hongjoong’s eyes began fading more and more even with daylight feeding its nuance. Seonghwa took his hand, interlocking their fingers. “Let’s take you home?” </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p2">.·:·.<span class="s1">☽✧</span> <span class="s2">✦</span> <span class="s2">✧</span><span class="s1">☾</span>.·:·.</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">Seonghwa buried his face into his hands as he sat down at his desk, tired from all the hours he spent reading charts and nothing else. At first he was with three others on the shift, but long into the hours of the night he found himself alone with Yeosang, who hasn’t taken a single break. He worked sensibly albeit his readings were slower than before ever since experiencing life as a mortal in Tellus and his objectivity was slightly altered, but it was something he could get away with until Yeosang scolded him.</p><p class="p1">“Is he resting?”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa lifted his eyes up, squinting them as they readjusted to the light. “I hope so. I’m not sure what he’s doing.”</p><p class="p1">Yeosang was the only one who knew the complete truth. He expressed no surprise upon finding out and it was still a mystery whether it was because he couldn’t believe it or because he already knew something. Hongjoong resorted to this decision due to the desperate need for someone else other than Seonghwa with a clear memory of the present life to rely on in case of another amnesia induced migraine. They didn’t happen often, but when they did, the skies were aching with him.</p><p class="p1">“I will work for both of you, so don’t let this be a reason,” Yeosang said, opening the balcony door while the clock was deciding if it should reset itself or not. He looked at the sky by accident, noticing something that he has seen only once before, an expanding fissure in the sky and rays of light in a hazardous pattern trying to break through. It has been there for many nights, but too small to stir worry. “Go see him and leave this to me.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa held in a gasp upon seeing the breaking sky, stars absorbed, falling victim to gravity. He dropped everything he was doing and rushed to Hongjoong’s room as quietly as he could without causing an earthquake with how his feet slammed against the glass floor.</p><p class="p1">“Hongjoong-” he gulped the rest of his sentence, staring in confusion at the disarray of notes and papers scattered across the furniture and seating and floor. It was all Hongjoong’s handwriting, from calm and nicely undulated letters to page tears from how much he pressed the quill. “What have you done?”</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong was looking out the window from where he could only see the beginning of the fissure. He was unharmed and his cheeks were dry. “What if I told you that it’s time to go?” he mumbled. His eyes have lost their colour. They were mirror and crystal.</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa clenched his fists. His decisive done frightened him. “Why?” He asked, ready to drop to his knees and beg. It was the greatest form of vulnerability he only granted Hongjoong rights to witness. As a lover of knowledge and life, Seonghwa would plead even <em>him</em> for more days where his feet would strike the ground and his hands to hold quills and bows. In that transition between one life and another, there was nothing. There were no words for how much Seonghwa hated those times.</p><p class="p1">Hongjoong looked at him, then rolled his sleeve up, revealing his wrist. In the place where there once lyrics and song titles now names were written one under the other, like a list. “Seonghwa,”</p><p class="p1">Swallowing hard, Seonghwa approached him. “Yes. Seonghwa.”</p><p class="p1">“I forgot it twice today. When we went out in the garden, my head started spinning around like I remembered something. And it happened yesterday too. And the day before. And the day before. So many times. But none of these things I’ve done in this life. I don’t think this body can take it for much longer.”</p><p class="p1">“But I- I don’t want to leave.”</p><p class="p1">“I never said you should.”</p><p class="p1">“And you really think I will stay here without you?”</p><p class="p1">“One of us has to. I might…come back soon. I don’t know how kind Chaos will be with me next time, but…maybe. Maybe I can somehow return.”</p><p class="p1">Sighing, Seonghwa threw all the papers onto the floor and grabbed Hongjoong by his shoulders. He ignored the feeling of his heart breaking when he saw Hongjoong’s eyes. “I wish you to heal.”</p><p class="p1">“You fool,” Hongjoong groaned and pushed Seonghwa away until he fell onto the sprawled papers. He stood up to his feet, still on the bed, holding the bedsheets into his fist. A blue spark flared in his right eye. “Are we doing this again?”</p><p class="p1">“I will do it, not you. And you can’t stop me. It’s always been you and I. Chaos punished me once, and I can take it again. I wish you to heal! I wish your memories fell into place! I wish you remembered the things you want to remember!”</p><p class="p1">As he was out of his reach, Hongjoong threw the bedsheet over Seonghwa’s head to shut him up, then leapt out of the bed, wrapping his arms around him and holding him. “Alright, I get it. I get it.” He clenched his teeth, pressing his eyes more out of anger than anything. “That’s enough. Stop it.”</p><p class="p1">Seonghwa dragged the bedsheet off his head and Hongjoong smiled instantly at how locks of his hair were sticking up like sprouts angry at the sun. “We’re not leaving yet. We’re staying, and we’ll be fine. <em>You’ll</em> be fine. And remember you’re safe here. This world we’ve created is much better than the last. You have a lyre and ballads you need to write. You have a family who’s still together. You have Yeosang, who whether he likes it or not, is also family. And I’m here too. We don’t have to chase after each other anymore.” He pressed a kiss onto his forehead, holding him tenderly. “See? The world isn’t so bad.”</p><p class="p1">Eyes closed, Hongjoong sunk himself into the velvet of Seonghwa’s voice, taking in his words and faithfully repeating them to himself, picturing name and face. He only wished he heard him clearer. “Right,” he said, as the breaches in the sky narrowed into nothingness and the stars regained their place.</p>
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